Pipe Contest
We’re coming into the business end of the ASP World Championship Tour, with only 3 events to go, the Rip Curl Pro Portugal, O’Neil Santa Cruz Pro and the legendary Billabong Pipeline Masters, the title race is shaping up for an exciting finish.
Following his victory in the Quiksilver Pro France, 11x ASP World Champion Kelly Slater has jumped up to 2nd in the ratings, behind Australian Joel Parkinson.
At the end of the year, when calculating a surfers points for the World Title, out of the 10 events, only a surfers 8 best results are counted. This means that the surfers get 2 ‘throw away’ results, or rather, only 2 events to surf poorly.
Kelly Slater
Currently, only 7000 points separate the top 4 surfers, with 10,000 points awarded for an event win.
As it stands now: #1 Joel Parkinson 46200, #2 Kelly Slater 45450, #3 Mick Fanning 43000 and #4 John John Florence 39150.
However if we take away the surfers worst 2 results at this stage, the leader board looks quite different: #1 Kelly Slater 43200, #2 Mick Fanning 39500, #3 John John Florence, #4 Joel Parkinson 37000.
A lot can still happen in 3 events, the World Title really is anybodies for the taking. Hopefully we’ll see the title go down to the wire Pipeline; which just so happens to be John John’s backyard. Could we see him dethrone Kelly as the youngest ever World Champ at 19?