Lee Wilson loses the final contest to MC Tai Graham
After locking in his 2nd Indonesian Surfing Championship title by beating WCT veteran Jake Patterson, scoring Perfect 10s for a huge air-reverse on a 5-footer in the finals, and suffering conditions that turned onshore and worthless for the final at Keramas, the newly annointed Indonesian surf series champion Lee Wilson required only a 5-point ride to walk home with every oversized check on the beach. He refused to safety surf and blew it. Was it worth it?
Stab: Even the winner admits you were the better surfer out there. Did you really need to be blasting those 10-point airs in that final heat?
LEE WILSON: I wanna impress the crowd. It’s one thing to get points, but it woulda been way better to win that heat on a trick rather than doing turns to chase a score. That’s not the future of surfing. Guys like Dane get scores off one big trick, so if you can do it, why not do it.
Four different surfers could have taken the title in this event — was there a lot of pressure?
So much. Seriously. But about a week ago I just decided to get over it. You can’t always win. The ocean might not cooperate. Things happen. That heat could have cost me the title. I was against an ex-WCT guy. But this is a dream come true.
Run us through the air you did in the semis that won “best maneuver.”
It’s a roll of the dice. I tried to do another one in the final and I didn’t make it. But that one felt like butter. Just to try something different and make it…and then to get a ten, it felt amazing.
day 5 highlights part1 from QUIKSILVER INDONESIA on Vimeo.
And we hear this the the first time your wife has ever come to watch you compete.
First time ever. She says she’s never coming again either. She’s just too nervous. My whole family doesn’t like to watch me. My mom’s crying right now and she’s not even here. If she was here, she’d be screaming just out of nervousness.
Is the second title better than the first?
This one definitely feels better. This one I had some doubts and I guess it fired me up. There were four or five surfers who could have taken the title here, and everyone thought Garut [Widiarta] was gonna have it because all he needed was a third place. And then Tipi got that wave in the last minute of his heat and took him out. I was just laughing. The only set of the whole heat and he gets two barrels on it to take out my main competition. I couldn’t believe it.
How does the WQS talent pool compare to the ISC talent?
The WQS is the best surfers in the world but the waves are shitty. It doesn’t do it justice. And a lot of the guys who qualify through the WQS and go on the WCT just don’t know how to deal with good waves. Like, Nathaniel Curran. He won the WQS but he’s struggling to on the WCT. Here we have good talent and good waves, this is how the WQS should be.
So you don’t have any desire to move onto that program?
I’d rather just film and enjoy it more. I’m 24. I’m surfing at my peak. And I’m loving it. I’ve seen people on the WQS and they hate it. Heaps of traveling. Heaps of stress. Heaps of wasted money. They fly halfway across the world to surf 1-foot slop and they might get knocked in the first heat. Keramas is one of the best waves in the world. And this is just one of the waves on the Indonesian tour that shows real surfing. No chop hopping on one-foot waves. Real turns. Real barrels. This is what people want to see. - Nathan Myers
Posts: 14
Reply #14 on : Wed November 25, 2009, 12:40:46