Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Jordy barrels through to finally ring that bell in Oz!
Smith first SA surfer to win Bells Beach Classic in event’s 56-year history
AN EMOTIONAL Jordy Smith finally laid a 56-year-old record to rest on Thursday when he rang the coveted bell at Bells Beach in southern Australia.
A South African had not won the longest running surfing event in all the years of its history until winning the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach. South Africans claim Martin Potter as their own, but by the time he won at Bells in 1989, he was officially British.
Formerly the Bells Beach Surf Classic, the contest has been held over Easter at Bells Beach, Victoria since 1961 but only turned pro in 1973.
The Bells event has a close link to rock ‘n roll. Did you know Australian rock band, Australian Crawl, once sponsored the event? That was 1984, when Australian Cheyne Horan won. Their big hit was “The Boys Light Up”. The track Hells Bells by AC/DC is played at the start of each day of the event, a lesser known tradition to having the winners ring his and her bell.
This was Smith’s second consecutive crack at making history after he made the final last year, before then losing to Australia’s Matt Wilkinson.
Australians, as you can imagine, have dominated the event, with 29 wins. Of the six wins by Americans, four were by Kelly Slater and two by Tom Curren. The seven wins by Hawaiians are dominated by Sunny Garcia (four) and Andy Irons (two), while Jeff Hakman became the first foreigner to win (1976). Brazilian Adriano de Souza makes up the last stat.
Smith made history in conditions that were made for him. Big, glassy, double overhead right-hand walls winding down a reefy pointbreak are made for his giant hacks and huge round-the-house cutbacks.
Smith came up against Brazilian Caio Ebelli, who had taken John John Florence out in the semis and was looking dangerous. However, Smith posted some excellent scores while surfing with supreme confidence and stringing some big moves together in a smooth, flowing style. His heat total of 18.90 proved a bridge too far, and it was no bell for Ebelli.
The big South African, who hails from Durban but now lives in Cape Town, was a bit cheeky when he made a flamboyant bell- ringing gesture after the third excellent wave of his heat (the two highest scores count). However, it did not prove premature, luckily, and the score backed him up: a near perfect 9.77.
The win puts Smith back into title contention. He’s now ranked #2 in the world, with nine events to go. There were some heartstopping moments in his semi- final against Hawaiian Ezekiel Lau though. With one minute to go in the heat, he needed a 7.53 score to overtake Lau. He got 7.70 in the dying seconds, which scraped him into the final.
Drama was never far away in the event. It was entertaining to watch on the live stream. To milk scores, competitors were riding up onto the beach, often via a “dry dock” floater over the last section of the wave.
Judges award points if you stay on your feet after a big move, but this was hard when surfers were basically diving off their boards into compacted sand to “oohs and aahs”.
Former winner Potter, who is a commentator for the World Surf League, said the Australian word was a “cutlet crumble”, when you get encrusted with sand like a chop – in the literal meaty sense of the word, though it did seem foolhardy at times.
Only in Australia.
Cape Town’s Mikey February wore the striped leader’s yesterday as he went into the third event of the City Surf Series, the Corona Durban Surf Pro presented by Quiksilver and Roxy. Clean 3’ surf met the 130 mostly South African surfers vying for points on the WSL Qualifying Series. Looks like the surf will dwindle to almost nothing in glassy conditions along the Durban beachfront’s Golden Mile. A long period 3-4’ ground- swell finally creased the ocean yesterday afternoon after a flat spell lasting much of last week. Today, clean light SE offshore breezes brush back the tail-end of the swell, which looks around maybe 3-4’ this morning, easing to 3’ during the day. Muizenberg looks light onshore and very small. Tomorrow, the swell has gone and the wind picks up fresh to strong and blowing hard. This will polish off any remaining surf, but 3’+ windswell will start building in False Bay, but onshore and messy at Muizenberg.