Happenings

KELLY SLATER WINS HIS 7TH WORLD TITLE IN BRAZIL!!!!

11-8-05

Pro surfing was at its most unpredictable today.  Check it.  After
dominating his heat yesterday in true man of steel fashion, Kelly goes home, has a quiet dinner with friends and goes to bed early.  He's in great spirits.  Feeling it.  Then he shows up for his heat this morning for his Round 4 heat with Travis Logie, and he suffers a full scale deja vu of his shockingly bad heat against Damien Hobgood last month in France.  He makes mistake after mistake - mistiming easy maneuvers and allowing Logie into the best wave of the heat.  Afterward, he only blames himself for the loss. Things go from bad to worse for Slates when Andy paddles out next and demolishes Bede Durbidge.  This heat win doesn't guarantee that Andy stays alive (he needs the next one to do that), but Kelly's clearly devastated. He actually tries to leave the site and drive two hours back to Florianopolis before being talked out of it by CJ Hobgood.

Everyone waits around for Andy's next heat against Nathan Hedge. Hedge sits upstairs with Kelly and tells him he's going to do the impossible. "I am going to win this heat," he says. "It's going to end today."

A few minutes later, the heat is on.  Andy grabs a couple quick ones while Hedgey waits out the back.  The surf has picked up a bit today and the sets are almost head-high.  Hedge finds one and rips his way to a nine - making Praia Vila look like a soft day at North Narrabean.  Andy storms back posting a 7.67 and a 9.17 in quick succession.  Hog now needs a 7.81 and so he does something Andy would do:  he waits.  He passes up a set wave and then finds the one he wants behind it.

And you know what?  What he does on that crumbly, left wall gives Kelly Slater his long awaited 7th World Title. Hog destroys that sucker. Andy is left out the back waiting for a last wave that never comes.

As the final seconds tick away, no one is looking out at the Hedge/Irons heat that is still in the water; they are all staring at Kelly in the competitors' bleachers.  Kelly can't even bear to watch. He pulls his hood over his eyes.  The horn blows.  The new hats, shirts and foam fingers celebrating #7 come out.  CJ hugs Kelly and takes photos of him.  Tears stream down Kelly's face.

He does a few interviews, then makes his way down to the ASP office where he grabs a hold of the World Title trophy.  ASP CEO Brodie Carr tells him that this is only a temporary thing. This one is staying here and he'll get the real one in Hawaii.  "No way," Kelly says.  "I want this with me on the plane to Florida. I want to drink beer from it at the Island Hut."

He heads to the beach for the ceremony.  The pumped up Brazilian fans are going mad as he gives a speech and poses for photos.  Meanwhile, the 3rd Quaterfinal is still going on. It doesn't matter.  No one's watching it. They're all down here celebrating with Kelly.

"Thank you, Brazil," he says.  "I feel like a second brother to you."

11-7-05

Back to business.  After 4 straight lay days of flat waves and non-stop fiestas, the Nova Schin WCT Brazil finally clicked back into gear yesterday afternoon and we managed to run the first 6 heats of Round 2 in pouring rain and tiny, tattered waves.  Oh well. The contest organizers had to do something.  Those on the party program were melting down from acute cases of whiplash. Seriously.  Take a look at the gene pool here and you'll be convinced that God is a Brazilian. 

So here's what happens today.  We're up early for a change because last night was the first one of the trip where we made it home before 6am.   We make the two-hour commute to the remote site at Imbituba this morning down a highway affectionately called "the road of death" for a day that finally promises to have some bearing on what we're all here for - the freaking World Title race.

So Heat 7 of Round 2 gets underway in conditions that Taylor Knoxcalled, "possibly the worst I've ever seen at a WCT."  It's 2-3,howling onshore and drizzling.  There's hardly anyone on the beach and the boys are having trouble stringing together two off the tops on a single wave.  But then Kelly and Andy show up at the beach and things start to improve. The tide fills in, the sun peaks its way through the clouds and the surf becomes marginally better.  CJ,Damo and Fanning cruise by a trifecta of Brazilian wildcards and Cory Lopez easily disposes of Tom Curren.

Kelly watches it all from the competitors' area.  His opponent, local battler, Guilherme Ferreire, is sitting nearby with his girlfriend happily taking photos.  Kelly looks him up and down andsays, "Keep smiling now, bro, our heat's up next."

The horn blows a few minutes later and it's on.  Even though it's been flat, Kelly's been practicing each day and it shows.  On his 2nd wave he busts out the best turn anyone's seen in a month -  a torque-ing power hack square in the pocket - one for the old school.  His next wave- where he pulls a berserk backside reverse 360 on his final maneuver - is one for the new.  Ferreire is incombo-land and doesn't have a chance.

On the beach, Kelly gets mobbed by the fans and media and says, "The way everyone's acting here now after this heat makes me feel like I've already won the title, but I know there's a long way to go."

Andy's up next.  He has zero margin for error as a loss in this round, or any round before the quarter finals, will hand the title to Kelly.  Andy's got a more difficult draw in Heitor Alves. Alves, a lightning quick goofy foot nicknamed "The Flash," just won the Onbongo 6 Star WQS event here last week. 

The heat gets off to a slow start before AI finds his feet and throws down a few Angry Irons upside-down reverses of his own.  Alves thinks he's got to go huge on every turn - making the classic rookie mistake against AI  - and blows a few waves that would have otherwise given him a decent score.  Andy's in domination mode for all of the heat until Alves finds a head-high left, shows off a pretty wicked forehand attack and gets a 9.1 for the effort. 

Backstage, in the hot tub, Kelly can only rue what could have been had Alves secured a decent backup earlier. 

11-1-05

"There was this crazy strobe light and every time I blinked I caught a view of this girl with this amazing rig - full on rig-asaurus, and thenI blinked a saw another one and another one and another one.  I was spinning. I didn't know what to do. It was too much. "  Timmy Reyes after a night out in Brazil

That's Brazil for you.  The surf isn't going to blow you away, but he garotas - that's another story.  The call was made early tomove the contest two hours south to Imbituba where chest high lefts were hitting a sandbank and occasionally running for fifty yards. The problem - a chest high wave here has about one tenth the power of asimilar sized wave just about anywhere else on tour.  The Floridians and the many, many Brazilian wildcards Sunny, Kalani, Luke,Shane Beschen, Dean Morrison, Tim Curran decided not to come and an injured Taj Burrow couldn't make it either had no trouble adapting to the gutlessness, but just about everyone else did.  As Timmy put it, "You pretty much have to do half turns on every section because if you try to go vert you'll bog, but I can't bring myself to do halfturns."

The power shortage put an interesting wrinkle into the BIG STORY here, which is of course Title Watch Part 2.  Kelly Slater looked alittle unsteady at first heat, but managed to find a few frothy lips to bash and easily skated by Occy and Guga Aruda.  Andy Irons was upnext and had a shocker through the first 3/4ths of the heat.  He was sitting way behind Taylor Knox needing a 9.3 on a day when 6.5's were hard to come by.  But just as the peanut gallery was scanning their heat sheets looking to see which wildcard Andy could face in door die Round 2, a bona fide 4 foot wave appeared at Andy's doorstep.  Three speed floats, one giant wrap and four more inside cracks later, AI had posted the highest score of the day 9.5 and was sailing through to Round 3.  Afterwards as he signed autographs he said, It's plain and simple what I have to do and I'm going to go for it and try to win every single heat." 

But if he makes one mistake in a heat or Kelly beats him in the finals here, it's all over and Kelly clinches #7.

Fasten your seat belts folks.  Come Friday and Saturday when the surf is supposed to pick up a bit - this is going to be a battle.