Dirk Ziff must have exhaled a huge sigh of relief when Gabriel Medina fell short of sealing the world title in Portugal. The reclusive financier of the WSL, addressed the audience at the SIMA Waterman’s Ball earlier this year about his disdain for such anti-climactic world title scenarios.
“Many times since we have become involved, the new world champion was sitting on the beach, not even at the last event of the year, hoping for someone else to lose. This is when many fans tune out.”
Fortunately, he gets his script and the WSL have our full attention with the title race coming down to the last event of the season at Pipeline.
For Toledo, Wilson and Medina however, there are two sleeping giants that have the potential to upend their title hopes. – Kelly Slater & John John Florence.
Despite both on the injured list, Kelly with his bung foot that miraculously recovers at Surf Ranch and once in a decade swell events, and Florence, who buckled his knee freesurfing at Keramas. Neither would pass up an opportunity to surf the Banzai with one other guy out. For the competitive and headline grabbing 11x world champ, an appearance at Pipe writes himself into the WSL’s title race narrative.
It’s also an opportunity to provide a little payback.
Remember when Medina blew straight past Kelly in their Round 5 heat and into the quarterfinals, with one epic burn at last year’s Pipe Masters?
Medina used his priority halfway through the heat as Slater knifed into a Backdoor runner that was sure to get him out of being combination. The GOAT had to straighten out, his hopes of a solid score extinguished.
While the 2017 world title was sealed by John John Florence, Medina’s feisty encounter to usurp Kelly at his favourite venue won’t be forgotten.
John John, like Ziff, likes to fly well below the radar. However, he made plenty of noise when his team, Parallel Sea, dropped his latest edit titled ‘Space’ last month. At last count, it had over 513K plays.
Perhaps it was a shot across the bows to remind those in the hunt that he was still number one.
With John John sitting at 33rd and Kelly 35th there’s every likelihood they will be pitted against top seeds, Toledo, Wilson and Medina in the early rounds if they decide to compete.
With everything on the line Toledo, Wilson and Medina now have two other scenarios to think about.