Two half days and one full day of competition into it, the second last regular event of the WSL world tour, the J-Bay Pro has been just a little underwhelming, with only spasmodic glimpses of the full potential of that legendary righthand point.
By the time you read this, an expected late week pulse may have delivered an epic finals day – let’s hope so – but as I write the only clear thing to have emerged is a growing clarity about who’s going to make the final five and who is not.
The hardest pill to swallow out of that lot for Aussie fans is that it seems our zen warrior Jack Robinson is out of the hunt. Labouring at #7 in the rankings going in, Jack is likely to head further south to #9 following his inexplicable round of 16 loss to Italy’s Leo Fioravanti, and be out of contention for the final five to battle for the world title, with only a win at Teahupo’o in the next event giving him an outside chance of jagging the fifth spot in the five, and therefore the toughest road to a title.
Jack has shown flashes of his trademark brilliance, but since overcoming his dramatic form slump following his win at Bells (a last and a second last) he has still seemed to lack his true firepower, and that was evident when Leo beat him through smarter wave selection.
With the WSL finals to be held for the first time at Fiji’s epic Cloudbreak left, Jack’s presence in waves of consequence will be sorely missed, if that’s the way the cookie crumbles, but our Ethan Ewing, who had hardly put a foot wrong at J-Bay, until he almost threw away a round of 16 victory against Jake Marshall by sitting out the back in a declining swell, waiting for a miracle to appear while his opponent manufactured scores on small waves. Somehow he scraped through, but it was a shady recollection of the Ethan of old for fans of this exquisite surfer.
As I write, of the world title contenders, Jordy Smith (now #2 in the rankings), Italo Ferreira (#4) and Jack Robinson (#7) are out of the mix at J-Bay, meaning a shuffle at the top, with Yago Dora wearing the yellow jersey into the last event, with Jordy Smith and Kanoa Igarashi in two and three (either way around) behind him, Ethan at four and Griff Colapinto back into the five. Outside chance improvers Filipe Toledo (#8) and Leo Fioravanti (#10) would need a couple of miracles to qualify for the finals.
Meanwhile, in the women’s draw, Molly Picklum, looking commanding at J-Bay, has already secured her slot in the final five and leads the ratings and is still in the mix in the current event.
It will take a train to stop her winning J-Bay and going on to take her first world title. But if anyone is going to do it, that would be Hawaii’s Gabby Bryan, currently #2 on the live rankings but with Caity Simmers right on her heels.
A little further back we have Betty Lou Sakura-Johnson of Hawaii and our Bella Nichols tight as for #4 and #5. All are still live at J-Bay. Outsiders for the five at this stage are US’s Caz Marks and our Tyler Wright but it would require a superhuman effort for either to make the five.
Overall, it’s shaping up for an interesting finish at J-Bay, which you may have already seen by the time you read this, and action stations for Teahupo’o and Cloudbreak, the two best lefts on the planet.
Big, beautiful marine disaster
While the king of what used to be known as the free world keeps trumpeting (see what I did there?) the outcomes of his “big, beautiful bill” to every American who is not about to be turfed out, the glory of the moment has been lost on surfing environmentalists around the US coasts.
According to surf, snow and skate website The Inertia, while public outrage and political interests led Republicans to scrap plans to sell off public lands, Congress quietly passed conditions to open millions of acres of ocean to oil drilling. Pete Stauffer, ocean protection manager at Surfrider Foundation, told The Inertia that “every American should be outraged” by the risk these provisions pose to the ocean. He called it the “largest fossil fuel giveaway in US history”.
According to Stauffer,the provisions that passed with the bill mandate at least 30 lease sales for oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico over a 15-year period, each totalling at least 80 million acres. It also calls for six lease sales of at least one million acres each for drilling in Alaska’s Cook Inlet over a 10-year period.
Aside from the new drilling zones, Stauffer highlighted other provisions in the bill that weaken environmental protections, such as subsidies for offshore drilling, pay-to-play privileges for polluters, and funding cuts to climate, coastal resilience, endangered species, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Of course this is a mere blip in comparison with the big picture stuff that emerges every day, but American surfers have every right to be very afraid.
