Just one punt, that’s all it took, yeah… just one punt.
It should be a song, and I can hear the Brazilian crowd of 10-20-50,000 (depending on which commentator you believe) singing it at the top of their lungs as their own Yago Dora, in his maiden WCT final, took down Australia’s Ethan Ewing, easily the best technical surfer on tour, at the Rio Pro. And in a disappointing day for the Aussies, world title hope Tyler Wright also got taken down by Californian pocket rocket Caitlin Simmers, the most exciting surfer in the women’s draw.
The backwash-affected beach break of Saquarema had its moments over the final two days of competition, at its best looking like North Narrabeen on an average day, but the high tide finals last weekend were not amongst them, although… While Tyler, who has been on a roll all season and currently holds down the number two ranking, looked out of sorts in the early stages, the diminutive Caity took off on a set wave that was twice her size, smashed the lip and landed it for an eight plus to open, sending the rowdy fans into a frenzy, despite her birthright. When Caity backed up with a workmanlike six plus and combo-ed the Aussie, it was all over bar the shouting, and there was plenty of that to come.
It was fitting that Ewing and Dora, the standout men of the event in completely different ways, should meet in the final. And in the opening stages it looked like it might go to plan, with Ethan milking the fat lefts for every hard-won point while Yago took to the air at every opportunity without a clean landing. Although he’s been spoken of as a world title contender for several years now, the 25-year-old Brazilian was surfing his first CT final for a very good reason. He can’t help himself. He chucks the house at it instead of building one, as we used to say in the old ASP days. Too often risk-taking has robbed him of certain victory, but not this time.
I’m not a fan of the one-manoeuvre perfect score, but I’ve seen plenty of huge airs that deserved a 10. Yago Dora’s last weekend in Saquarema was not one of them, but it sure made the mob on the beach happy. To be honest, if he’d been given a more realistic eight he still would have beaten Ethan, but the tremendous psychological advantage of securing a perfect score where there should have been none was enough to drive the Aussie into a corner from which he couldn’t recover.
The win rockets Dora into fifth place in the rankings while Ewing is the only Aussie man in the top five at number three. With only two events left before the finals series, both form surfers have a real shot at making the cut for Lower Trestles in September, while Jack Robinson, now down at eight, has the job in front of him. Fortunately, the next event at Jeffrey’s Bay, conditions willing, will play right into the hands of the big carving, natural-foot Australians.
In the women’s draw, number one Carissa Moore and number two Tyler Wright have already qualified, but they better look out for the teenaged terror from Oceanside who seems to get better every contest of her rookie year.
Say it ain’t so, ELO
Sorry about the fixation with butchering song titles for headlines this week. I can’t explain it, but I can’t explain the mysterious departure of the World Surf League CEO Erik “ELO” Logan either.
He looked like he was having a blast down there in Rio, too, even while the missiles were landing all around him. I mentioned in this place last week that the CEO seemed to be a little over-amped when he installed himself in the commentary booth on day one at Saquarema and gushed non-stop about how wonderful the Brazilian surfing fan base was, just a week or two since he’d been pouring water over the flames of a rash of death threats on surfers, including Ethan Ewing, when results didn’t go Brazil’s way at the Surf Ranch Pro. You have to admire a peacemaker, of course, but maybe ELO went a little too far.
One thing is for sure: he didn’t jump, he was pushed. Out the door, immediately. Don’t come Monday. And it happened just hours after he’d been Tweeting merrily from Rio about the glorious future unfolding for WSL.
As always happens when an outsider boss gets toppled in the surf industry, the calls were loud for a real surfer to pick up the reins, with a few bloggers predicting that the whole thing was a setup for Kelly Slater to take over. I don’t think that’s going to happen, but it’s instructive to note that Kelly has never been the CEO of anything, and the management of a global corporation, even one as broken as WSL, is not an easy job.
Australia’s Andrew Stark is probably the best qualified person from within the tent, but we’ll see how the politics of that works.
