“There’s no way that was a 3.77,” claimed Taj to a crowd of latte sippers who were craning their necks towards a flat screen on the wall of Pond café in Torquay. Team Tracks had stumbled into the cosy scene, nursing hangovers after watching surf film director come hip-hop artist Kid Mac (aka Macario De Souza) play the Torquay hotel the night before.
Taj was already safely through to round three and could afford to pass judgement on Kelly’s heat from the comfort of his café table. You were watching. You know what happened. Chasing a 3.77 with minutes to go Kelly had paddled in, floated methodically, check turned, joined the careful cutback club and fallen on his final turn. It wasn’t convincing but was it enough?
“Come on ‘Brother’ seal it,” shouted Taj like an AFL football supporter, as Kolohe scrambled into a wave while the judges mulled over Kelly’s mediocre ride. If you aren’t familiar with the reference, ‘Brother’ is the name Kolohe’s father; friends and commentators looking to be edgy call Kolohe. Needless to say, Taj was making it very clear who he was supporting. He and Kolohe share Matt Biolis as a shaper and lets face it, if you’re a top five surfer, it’s always good to see someone sentence Kelly to a sudden death, round two fight.
“Kelly got the worst wave ever,” there’s no way it was a 3.77, it was like a 2.5,” Taj explained to perennial wingman, John Gannon. The score for Kelly’s final ride still hadn’t dropped. Cutlery chinked, the coffee machine hummed and the morning banter continued as the surfers in the room glared intensely at that little graphic at the top left of the screen that announces the fate of the world’s best surfers.
Kelly got the score and sighed with noticeable relief for the cameras, Kolohe screamed in the competitor’s area and Taj shook his head in disbelief. Dad Dino was somewhere in a dark corner, denouncing the integrity of the entire judging panel. His kid was now 0 from 6 against Kelly.
Once again Slater was at the centre of the drama. The day before he’d waltzed into the Patagonia store, right across the road from the Quiksilver retail outlet that still boasts his billboard image on its main display window.
Tracks got a tip off from the Patagonia rep, who’d been smart enough to put the feelers out when Kelly cut the Quikcord on April Fools day this year. “Kalani and I need some warm stuff,” Kelly told the rep. After 23 years in Quiksilver threads buying whatever surf wear he wanted no doubt proved to be a novel experience for Kelly.
The King might have been buffed out in one of Patagonia’s warm-weather gowns but his surfing still looked a little shaky. Kelly nearly took his own head off with one mistimed snap and fell heavily in the flats after he air-dropped out of another top-turn. The disadvantage of the shorter equipment he rides is that it lacks projection. This means he sometimes gets hung up in the heavy Bells lips and occasionally struggles to get enough length out of his turns – Bells sometimes requires you to traverse huge sections just to get to the sweet spot and he probably would have had an easier time of making his final turn on the dubious 3.77 on a slightly longer wave weapon.
The advantage of downsizing equipment however, was made clear when Kelly was out on the face for his high-scoring 7.00. Unencumbered by extra length he was able to radically change direction mid-way through his opening turn. Suddenly a regulation carve was transformed into an inverted snap that made the judges go, ‘Wow’! Although Kelly has won the event four times he and Bells have never been best of friends and it will be interesting to see if he can find a rhythm on his midget craft.
Although Parko also secured a last minute victory over the eternally unlucky Adam Melling, Joel was much more convincing than Kelly. His trusty JS’s have a definitive drift and glide. Speed is a given so all Parko has to think about is where to place one of his scything, butter smooth turns.
Perhaps buoyed by the knowledge that he will be on the cover of June Tracks, Jordy also looked extremely confident in his victory over Dion Atkinson and Felipe Toledo. In the cover story Jordy makes an unequivocal statement about his priorities and the decision not to divide his energies between free-surfing feats and making heats. “You can’t try to be one of the best freesurfers in the world and a world champion.” If Jordy is to make good on his hard-truth claims then he needs to get the campaign well and truly underway at Bells. His Gold Coast effort was extremely forgettable and while a quarters finish at Margarets is a solid result, he will have to do better if he is to be acknowledged as not only a great surfer but a great competitive surfer.
All photos ASP/Cestari
