In the pipeline for Jordy
First Hawaiian title boosts Smith before Pipe Masters
JORDY Smith clinched his first event victory in the Hawaiian Islands last weekend when he won the Vans World Cup of Surfing at Sunset Beach in excellent 2-3 metre waves.
The big South African, a former two-time finalist at Sunset, defeated a top class field and will start the final event on the WSL Championship Tour (CT), the Billabong Pipe Masters in Memory of Andy Irons, full of confidence that he can improve on his recent results at the iconic Banzai Pipeline.
The waiting period for the Pipe Masters opened on Thursday and runs until the 20th. Small waves are forecast for the weekend, and with a 32 trials event to determine the two wild cards for the event scheduled to run before the main event, Smith is only likely to get his campaign under way early next week.
He has the added incentive of being in the mix for the Hawaiian Triple Crown title, an accolade second only to the world title in prestige.
Currently in third place on the rankings, just 200 points behind newly-crowned 2016 world champion and Pipeline favourite John John Florence of Hawaii, and a hefty 5900 behind surprise rankings leader Frederico Morais of Portugal, Smith will need to better his previous best fifth place result at Pipe in 2010 to add the Triple Crown title to the Triple Crown Rookie of the Year award he received that year.
Elsewhere in Hawaii, Bianca Buitendag lost her spot on the WSL Women’s CT for next year despite a brave fight that saw the 22-year-old from Victoria Bay reach the quarter-finals of the Maui Women’s Pro. Needing to win the event to secure re-qualification, Buitendag eventually succumbed to world title runner-up Courtney Conlogue of California and will be campaigning in the Qualifying Series events next year.
The season-ending event was won by world champion Tyler Wright of Australia.
Wright posted her fifth event win out of the 10 events on the 2016 schedule when she overcame the challenge of former two-time event champ Carissa Moore of Hawaii in the final. On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, Steven Sawyer of Jeffreys Bay and Matthew Moir of Cape Town advanced to round four of the Jeep World Longboard Championships on Hainan Island in China.
Sawyer and Thomas King of Cape Town caused major upsets by defeating top seeds in their opening round encounters, while Moir, a former two-time ISA world longboard champ, had to fight through a tough round two match-up before he and Sawyer posted meritorious round three wins.
The South African surfing community received more global recognition when Let’s Be Frank, a movie starring Capetonian big wave charger Frank Solomon and directed by fellow Saffa Peter Hamblin, was voted Film of the Year at the annual Surfer Poll awards, considered the ‘Oscars’ of the sport.
The country’s inspirational adaptive surfing team will be in action at the ISA World Adaptive Surfing Championship in San Diego until today. Featuring a global field of 77 athletes whose love of surfing has seen them overcome physical challenges, the event can be watched at http://isaworlds.com/adaptive/2016/en/