The first cut may be the deepest but on the World Surf League championship tour the mid-season cut is the most hurtful.
For rookies on tour the pruning of the field after the fifth event can often mean that the dream is over before it really got going, although it must be said that the relatively recent introduction of the Challengers Tour offers a much softer landing than the old days when falling off tour meant fighting your way back through the arduous and poorly paid World Qualifying Series, which broke more would-be champions than it made through a combination of jetlag, poverty and homesickness.
Ah, but that was then and this is now, and many of the rookies will find their way back to the big tour and end up millionaires, if they aren’t already. It’s the old tour vets that I feel sorry for, the likes of Sally Fitzgibbons and Kelly Slater. I mean how many car and furniture commercials can Sal do before it all gets boring? And as for Kelly, whose impending retirement I dealt with in this space a couple of weeks ago, will he really be happy as an old-new dad, flitting between his multitude of beachfront homes teaching his new son to ride perfect waves? I’ll deal with the specific cases of those two surfing megastars in a moment, but first a situation update.
As I write day two of the Margaret River Pro, the final event before the cut, has just concluded after several off days with the men’s opening round completed along with the women’s elimination round and the first heat of four in the men’s elimination round. By the time you read this, the fates of the tour survivors and the eliminated will almost certainly have been determined, with just a couple more days of decent swell and offshores, so I’ll try to not to be too predictive. But, for the uninitiated, the fields at Margies are 34 ranked men and two wildcards, and 16 ranked women and two wildcards. After Margies, that reduces to 22 men and 10 women, so 12 men and six women are sent back to the qualifiers.
Looking at the women’s cut-line cluster of first, Australia has two surfers above it – Molly Picklum safe at third, and Tyler Wright marginal at eighth, but with the talent and conviction to almost be considered safe. Below the line we have Coolum’s Isabella Nichols closest at 12, Sally Fitzgibbons at 14, India Robinson at 16 and season replacement Sophie McCulloch at 17. All of them are alive in the Margaret’s event as I write and Bella has a 2000 point advantage over the others, but so far only one surfer above the cutline has been eliminated (Brazil’s Luana Silva) so much depends on how many above the line topple in the next round. My money would be on Bella, who saved her CT career with a win at Margaret’s two years ago, scratching over the line, and a very determined Sal Fitzgibbons getting close to a win and doing her Houdini trick yet again.
The men’s is much more difficult to predict, since the only competitor dead in the comp at Margie’s as I write is red-hot local junior champ Otis North, 17, who fell to Callum Robson and John Florence in the only elimination heat so far run at the time of writing. Above the cut-line Australia has Ethan Ewing at two, Jack Robinson at five, Liam O’Brien at 12, Ryan Callinan at 14 and Connor O’Leary (who technically surfs for Japan) at 16. Looking at it realistically and mathematically, none of them are going to be cut.
Under the line we have WA star Jacob Willcox at 27 and Callum Robson at 30. Both of them have the job ahead of them this week, but both are surfing brilliantly. The bad news is that Brazil’s world champs Gabriel Medina and Italo Ferreira both hovering right at the cut-like, seem to have found form at the right time. Either of them could win it, given a bit of power surf.
And then, of course, there’s the GOAT. Kelly Slater, 52, sits at 32 on the live rankings, and as I write he faces a tough elimination round heat coming up, and seems most unlikely to avoid the cut. The good news is that, speaking on the event telecast last Monday, WSL commissioner Jessi Myley-Dyer more than hinted that we hadn’t seen the last of Kelly, regardless of the outcome at Margaret River. “I don’t think we’re quite ready to let him go,” she gushed. “Maybe a wildcard for Cloudbreak or Chopes would be considered.”
Quelle surprise! Building sandcastles with KS Jr down at Ehukai Beach Park might have to wait just a little while longer.
