SLATER SET TO CLAIM HISTORIC 11th WORLD TITLE IN SAN FRAN

Vale Andy Irons

Jordy Smith Takes Maiden Win and ASP Lead at Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay

JEFFREYS BAY, South Africa (Sunday, July 18, 2010) – Jordy Smith (ZAF), 22, has claimed his maiden ASP elite victory, taking out the Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay over Adam Melling (AUS), 25, in front of a capacity hometown crowd.
 
Event No. 4 of 10 on the 2010 ASP World Tour, the Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay was nothing but blaring Vuvuzelas and roars from the bluff as these two titans went tit-for-tat in an incredible Final exchange. The young South African proved the victor, dominating from the outset and securing an emotional first win.
 
“This is the best day of my life,” Smith said. “The crowd on the beach has been supporting me the last few days and hearing the cheers and the Vuvuzelas just gets me fired up to perform. It feels like they’re pushing me along. I couldn’t have done it without them.”
 
The most experienced surfer at Jeffreys Bay, Smith left very little to chance in the Final against Melling, opening his account with a blazing 8.90 before backing it up with some scintillating forehand surfing for a 9.03. The combination of scores (17.93 out of a possible 20) proved insurmountable for Melling.
 
“I knew the swell was dying and I had to take advantage of every wave that came through,” Smith said. “Adam (Melling) is such a dangerous surfer. He’s been in form all day and I knew that if he got the waves, he would get the scores. I went out there knowing I had to open up strong.”
 
After taking the ratings’ lead over former nine-time ASP World Champion Kelly Slater (USA), 38, yesterday, Smith solidified his position as the ASP World No. 1 with today’s emphatic victory.
 
“It definitely is a different feeling,” Smith said. “To be chasing the lead and defending the lead are two different things. It’s a long year ahead and you can’t count anyone out until it’s over. I’m going to enjoy this feeling for now.”
 
Smith’s Final’s berth almost never was, as the big South African was comboed by lethal Australian Bede Durbidge (AUS), 27, with four minutes remaining in their Semifinal clash. Catching two waves in under a minute, Smith unloaded a barrage of aerials and forehand blasts to claw his way back into the lead.
 
“I’m still not too sure what happened – it’s all a blur,” Smith said. “I got that first one where I did the little grab air that I didn’t think was good, but the judges scored the whole wave pretty well. Then I backed it up and put everything I had into it.”
 
Melling’s “Cinderella” climb to the Finals was nothing short of sensational. Rated a lowly 41st on the ASP World Title Race rankings heading into Jeffreys Bay, the 2010 ASP Dream Tour rookie powered his way through five rounds of competition before coming short in the Final. His Runner-Up finish sees him bumped up to ASP World No. 19, well inside the safety zone for the dreaded mid-year field reduction.
 
“The ocean didn’t cooperate with me in the Final so that’s a shame but I couldn’t be happier,” Melling said. “We had amazing waves and to get the best result of my career is huge. I came into Jeffreys with a long road ahead if I were to make the mid-year cut-off, and now that I’m 19th, I feel like I have a bit of a buffer heading into Tahiti. I worked really hard to get here and I want to stay here.”
 
Durbidge suffered one of the hardest losses of the event, having defeat snatched from the jaws of victory by a last-minute crusade by Smith. Despite the bitter loss, Durbidge’s Equal 3rd vaults him from 10th to 7th on the ASP World Title Race rankings heading into the fifth event of the year.
 
“I had him comboed with only four minutes to go,” Durbidge said. “He took off on that one-footer and pulled that ‘Superman’ air and finished off well, then came out and got another one. I think he got two waves in a minute or something. It’s a hard way to lose, but Semifinals is my best result of the year and it’s something to build on. The focus is on Tahiti now.”
 
Taj Burrow (AUS), 32, consistently wowed audiences with his performance from Round 1 onwards, collecting the event’s highest heat total in yesterday’s Round 4. Despite today’s Semifinal loss at the hands of Melling, the Western Australian moves up to ASP World No. 2 heading into Tahiti.
 

Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay Final Results:
1 – Jordy Smith (ZAF) 17.93
2 – Adam Melling (AUS) 10.00

Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay Semifinal Results:
SF 1: Jordy Smith (ZAF) 14.83 def. Bede Durbidge (AUS) 14.40
SF 2: Adam Melling (AUS) 14.00 def. Taj Burrow (AUS) 10.67

Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay Quarterfinal Results:
QF 1: Jordy Smith (ZAF) 16.43 def. Adriano de Souza (BRA) 9.20
QF 2: Bede Durbidge (AUS) 12.17 def. Sean Holmes (ZAF) 11.83
QF 3: Taj Burrow (AUS) 11.00 def. Dane Reynolds (USA) 3.66
QF 4: Adam Melling (AUS) 16.43 def. Damien Hobgood (USA) 5.67

Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay Remaining Round 4 Results:
Heat 8: Adam Melling (AUS) 17.07 def. Dusty Payne (HAW) 11.50

Current ASP World Title Race Top 5 (after South Africa):
1. Jordy Smith (ZAF) 28500 pts
2. Taj Burrow (AUS) 24750 pts
3. Kelly Slater (USA) 23500 pts
4. Dane Reynolds (USA) 20000 pts
5. Adriano de Souza (BRA) 19500 pts
6. Mick Fanning (AUS) 19250 pts
7. Bede Durbidge (AUS) 18750 pts
8. Bobby Martinez (USA) 16500 pts
9. Jadson Andre (BRA) 16000 pts
10. Joel Parkinson (AUS) 14750 pts

Denny Aaberg IN STORE at Heritage Surf – June 27

Denny Aaberg, co-author of Big Wednesday, will be at Heritage Surf in Manly to celebrate the 40th anniversary of George Greenough’s The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun. See the making of this great film, meet Denny, own a piece of surfing history. See below and visit Heritage Surf Australia.

NZ-built UK surf reef criticised by experts | NATIONAL News

Who hasn’t dreamt of a perfect man-made reef at some unsurfable but consistent spot? Surfers and local officialdom in Bournemouth UK had such a dream. But the results? Well…

The performance of a three million pound $NZ6.2m New Zealand-built artificial surf reef at a British tourist beach has been sub-standard, according to Bournemouth Borough Council.

via NZ-built UK surf reef criticised by experts | NATIONAL News.

On TV tonight? Shipstern craziness

Film maker Tim Bonython sent through the following message, along with a framegrab of one Mikie Brennan freefalling into the madness that is Shipsterns just a few days ago.

SHIPPIES FOOTAGE WILL SCREEN ON TONIGHTS NEWS – ALL CHANNELS! Including SPORTS TONIGHT at 5.30pm & later around 10.30 pm.
Footage sent but cannot guarrantee will be shown will be Josiah Schmucker, Mark Mathews, Mark Healey & Mikie Brennan’s crazy ( XXL Ride of the Year candidate) ride.

Oh dear…. investigation launched into Sydney shark attack claims – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

This item can be read in its entirety on the ABC web site. Intriguing to see who was on the scene with a camera too.

Investigation launched into Sydney shark attack claims

By Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop

Authorities are investigating a surfer’s claim that he was attacked by a shark on Sydney’s Northern Beaches this morning.

Paul Welsh, 46, told a newspaper he had to cling to a rock to fight off a shark that he said had latched itself onto his leg.

Mr Welsh allegedly emerged from the water with a gash to his left leg around 8:00am (AEDT) at the Mona Vale Basin.

A New South Wales Health spokesman says the man had already sold his story to Channel Nine News by the time his wife had driven him to hospital.

….

Police are helping the Primary Industries Department with its investigation. They initially told the media the man had been attacked by a four-foot shark.

Shark spotter Michael Brown earlier told the ABC he was in the water with his 13-year-old son when he saw “a whole lot of thrashing”.

“It’s launched straight up into him, knocked him out of the water and then latched onto his leg, and luckily, he had a chance to grab onto a rock and the shark’s actually thrashing, trying to drag him back into the water,” he said.

“He’s managed to release himself from the shark and crawl up onto the rocks and just had a big bite mark in his leg and blood just streaming out of it.”

Mr Brown said he believed the animal was a two-metre-long great white shark.

As the director of SurfWatch Australia, an organisation that patrols for sharks and charges people for helicopter joyrides, Mr Brown has been agitating against the State Government for greater protections against sharks.

After three attacks in Sydney last year, he accused the Government of ignoring an email that had warned of a sharp increase in shark numbers.

via Investigation launched into Sydney shark attack claims – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Bonython catches it massive in HI

Renown surf movie maker Tim Bonython just sent this email around to his list. In case you didn’t see it, here’s what he has to say…

Hi everyone,

I have just returned home from Hawaii after shooting some of the BIGGEST SURF EVER!

MASSIVE MONDAY at Pe’ahi JAWS WILL FEATURE ON ALL COMMERCIAL TV STATIONS IN THERE NEWS TONIGHT .

& if you miss it watch SPORTS TONIGHT on CH 10 or SKY NEWS on Fox.

DONT MISS IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And here’s a little snap be pulled from the footage…

Mavericks contest founder sues ex-partners

Jeff Clark first paddled into the mammoth waves at Mavericks as a boy of 17, then surfed alone there for 15 years. This was long before the spot north of Half Moon Bay graced magazine covers, hosted one of the sport's blockbuster events and made Clark famous.

Now Clark is alone again.

The 52-year-old owner of a Half Moon Bay surf shop has waded into the courts in an effort to resolve the dispute that prompted his ouster last year from the surf contest he created – a quarrel as nasty as a plunge from the lip of a 40-footer.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court, Clark seeks damages from contest operator Mavericks Surf Ventures and three of its top officials. He claims they froze him out of the event and owe him tens of thousands of dollars in salary and royalties.

follow link for whole story Mavericks contest founder sues ex-partners.

VID :: MONSTER PADDLE WAVES SHATTER BILLABONG XXL BIG WAVE RECORDS

HAS EL NINO ALREADY SERVED UP THE LARGEST WAVES EVER CAUGHT?

NEWPORT BEACH, CA — The promise of the El Nino winter appears to have delivered for big wave surfers, as many long-standing records are ready to fall in this year’s Billabong XXL Global Big Wave Awards presented by Monster Energy.  And more than ever before, the Monster Paddle category (just for surfers who catch their waves without any jet ski assistance) has taken center stage as the elite of the sport refocus on this elemental man-against-the-sea tradition.  Visual evidence of these landmark performances can be viewed at the event website at www.BillabongXXL.com.

While huge swells have blasted nearly every coastline of the planet in recent months, it has been the Hawaiian Islands which have had the most mind-bending proof of the power of the current El Nino weather phenomenon.  December 7-8, 2009 saw one of the biggest swells in modern history batter the northern shores of the entire Hawaiian Chain, followed by another extraordinary day of outer reef waves on Christmas.  From these historic moments of oceanic grandeur have come images which show several top big wave surfers paddling into what may well be the biggest waves ever caught by human power in the long history of the sport.

Among these superlative rides is a massive dark wall caught by Shane Dorian and Mark Healey which closed out the legendary Waimea Bay on Oahu on December 7.  Also up for consideration is another mammoth peak at Waimea ridden by Chile’s Ramon Navarro which earned the South American hero a perfect score in the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau event on December 8. And more recently, grainy, documentary photos have arrived depicting Garrett McNamara paddling into a distant peak at Outer Log Cabins, a rarely-seen outer reef far off the North Shore shoreline, previously only the domain of tow-in surfers with jet-powered watercraft.

All are likely to figure prominently as finalists for the Monster Paddle Award to be given out at the tenth annual Billabong XXL Big Wave Awards to be held in California in late April.  A panel of big wave surfing and photography experts will analyze the available images and by interpreting the known sizes of the surfers and their surfboards, calculate reliable height estimates for the face of each wave.  One will emerge as the Monster Paddle winner and will receive $15,000 out of the total event purse of $130,000.

The current world record for a paddle-in wave belongs to Taylor Knox of San Diego, California who rode a wave measured at 52 feet at Todos Santos Island off of Ensenada, Mexico during the last major El Nino episode in 1998.  Many experts are expecting an update to the Guinness Book of World Records once this winter’s measurements are complete.

Dorian and Healey are veterans of decades of big wave hunting and both concur that their shared ride at Waimea was easily the biggest either had ever caught.  “I’d been waiting 15 years for that wave,” said Dorian, of Kona, on the Big Island. “That wave, we could see it from when it was like two or three minutes away from breaking, we could see the wave coming in, everybody’s screaming on the beach and yelling and stuff… When the wave finally came in, it was SO big.  The thing was a MONSTER.  We both put our heads down and started paddling and somehow we both caught it.

“I was going no matter what,” Dorian added. “And I know Mark felt the same way. It was just fun. A party wave — a wave of that size, and it was for sure the biggest wave I’ve ever paddled into, and to do it with my real good friend, it was very….memorable.”

Mark Healey has lived down the road from Waimea all his life and has been one of its most dedicated practitioners.  But he’d never seen waves like this.

“That was the biggest day I’ve ever had at Waimea,” said Healey.  “And that wave in particular was definitely by far bigger than anything I’ve ever caught out there, for sure.”

The wave was so large it closed out all the way across the Bay, not allowing the surfers the opportunity to kick out over the top of the wave as usual, and forcing them to straighten out and take the endless tons of whitewater on their heads.  But for Healey, a renowned freediver with the ability to hold his breath for over five minutes, it was a fun experience.  The longtime friends surfaced unharmed right next to each other, hooting with excitement.

“We were pretty stoked,” said Healey. ”Big waves are different, there’s a lot of brotherhood involved, stuff like that.  I’d rather have had Shane catch that wave than ride it alone.  It was cool to share a wave like that with a friend, and someone I look up to.”

McNamara, another North Shore stalwart, likes his own chances in the Monster Paddle derby.  A past winner of the XXL Paddle crown in 2007 for a huge wave at Northern California’s Maverick’s, “GMac” reckons his Outer Logs Christmas present was several notches larger.  “I don’t know how big it was,” McNamara said.  “But I do know it felt at least ten feet bigger than anything I’ve ever paddled into.  The Mavs wave a few years back was small compared to it….”

Remarkably, there may be much, much more to come.  This week the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center issued an alert confirming that the current El Nino episode had intensified in the last 30 days from “moderate” to “strong,” adding that the condition would exert a “significant influence on the global weather and climate in the coming months.”  And for surfers in the North Pacific basin, that means more enormous waves.  According to Surfline.com, major new swell events are lining up in the coming days, impacting the Hawaiian Islands around Monday and the West Coast around Wednesday of next week.

Categories in this year’s event include the Billabong XXL Ride of the Year, XXL Biggest Wave, Monster Paddle, Monster Tube, Surfline Best Performance, Billabong Girls Best Performance and the crowd-pleasing Verizon Wireless Wipeout of the Year.  In addition to all the latest entries in each category, full event details including formats, rules and archives of past XXL years can be seen at the event website at www.BillabongXXL.com.