Title surge fades with the swell in the Bay of Biscay
Your life takes on a whole new perspective being held by the ankles upside-down in a plastic tub of ice slurry. Wardo, who’s made a typically random cameo into the scene, has one ankle. I’m not sure whose got the other. The game involves standing on your head in a tub of ice water and seeing how long you can hold your breath. Wardo’s just been dunked in the tub himself, managing a creditable 23 seconds underwater before jumping to his feet and throwing fistfuls of ice into the crowd. It’s Friday night in France, and we’ve found plenty of company in the plaza outside the Rockfood, including a few guys still in the contest.
What these guys didn't count on was just how bad the forecast for this contest is looking. The Bay of Biscay is about as lifeless as it's going to be at any time for the next six months, and when the contest was caled on this morning it caught a few crew on the hop.
What these guys didn't count on was just how bad the forecast for this contest is looking. The Bay of Biscay is about as lifeless as it's going to be at any time for the next six months, and when the contest was caled on this morning it caught a few crew on the hop.
I heard reports Dane Reynolds was out last night, which was hardly a great surprise. It’s been his modus operandi for the entire year, and you’d be far more worried about his welfare if you caught him halfway through 50 push-ups. But if Reynolds continues to surf like he did today, he’s going to end people. In the third heat of the morning against Roy Powers and surfing the flat Machado stabilised twin, the Cardiganed Warrior lit up with a sublime mix of rail and punt. It was still typically Dane – at one stage he even let Roy paddle past him and take priority – but the way Dane was surfing there was nothing priority was going to do to help Roy. What Dane did today indirectly brought down the world number one. After Reynolds set the bar so high in the morning, the judges barbecued anyone not going hard at above the lip, and that included Joel Parkinson.
Kelly Slater could barely contain his delight walking down the beach for the following heat, watching French/Brazilian wildcard Patrick Beven chalk up an eight in the dying seconds of the heat and consigning Parko to back-to-back 17ths. Parko surfed within himself and that was always going to be dangerous in the mood the judges were in. With seconds left he had a chance to take the heat but got caught out of position when a set rolled through. Head down, he runs through the crowd to the competitor’s area looking for some space. “How the fuck did I just lose that?” he spits as he racks his board. The little things that were all going his way at the start of the year have begun to turn on him.
The only silver lining for Joel would be if Kelly and Mick – the only two guys with momentum enough in the ratings to run him down – were to bomb out in the same round. Kelly almost did. French wildcard Joan Duru had the chops to take him, but needing only a five for the win, he made the mistake of chasing the score he needed rather than simply chasing another nine. Predictably, Kelly was playing up his world title ambivalence. “I’ve got to do two heats better than Joel at every contest for the rest of the year, so I’m still along way off. If I was to win here then I’d go into Mundaka with a chance to do something.” Mick meanwhile was a metronome against Julian Wilson who couldn’t find a ramp to save himself. If either of them were to win this contest it’s going to eat a huge chunk of Parko’s 900-point ratings lead and ignite a world title race for the first time this year.- Sean Doherty
* Sean Doherty is the former editor of Tracks magazine and the author of MP: The life of Michael Peterson, My Brother’s Keeper: The official Bra Boys story and more.
Posts: 32
Reply #32 on : Thu October 01, 2009, 11:43:39