SO there he was, The Offsider, pleasantly surprised to get some great surf shots from one of his old haunts the other day. The package was mailed in by a local surfer who had undertaken a coast trip to the wave-rich Cape Palliser region to catch some of New Zealand's best breaks firing.
Funny how the Wairarapa had been popping up in the Age sports pages lately, warranting a mention in one of The Offsider's more recent columns, and via a large image splashed across the back page showing four local athletes posing on the peak of the Rimutakas, the range Wellington surfers had to cross to access the many quality breaks located on the North Island's southern coast. But The Offsider had little else to amuse himself with considering the first true south swell of the year had yet to arrive. One thing he'd thought he'd learned in 11 years of sportsbusting was that May was the best month but the nearby points had so far yet to produce anything substantial. Soon, my preciousss, he muttered to himself ...
The waves hadn't been all that great for Billabong Rio Pro either, the fourth leg of the ASP World Championship Tour which wound up early last week. Often shifty and random, Barra de Tijuca still dished up the odd throaty barrel and launch ramp appropriate for next level surfing. The title was eventually won by Tahiti's Michael Bourez but it was Kelly Slater who once again stole the show by scoring the only perfect 10 seen in the entire event, on the first wave of the first heat of the morning of finals day to boot. At around 10.10pm on Monday, May 12 (NZ time), Slater paddled into a beastly-looking thing which seemed unsurfable from mortal perspective. A beyond vertical drop was followed by a bottom-turn into sand-sucking dredger where, back to the wall and no rail grab, Slater disappeared into a dense, dark cavern below sea level before emerging triumphantly with a hail of tube-spit five or so seconds later (and through what is commonly referred to as a chandeliering escape route, not to be confused with the doggy door type of exit).
Trainspotters were unable to resist comparing Slater's 10 with a 9.5-pointer ridden earlier in the piece by Travis Logie on an even dredgier - if that was possible - shorebreak dumper, e.g. the two best scores at the Rio Pro were acquired deep inside the wave's bowels rather than up in the air. While aerials are an essential aspect of surfing's progression, there still remains a whiff of desperation about them. So technical are the airs in skating and snowboarding competitions it's hard for the layman to tell what is actually being done; a bit like listening to a drum solo on ye olde double live Lp and look what's happened to those! Of course, high performance has to be figured into the judging equation at events like Rio Pro, controversially regarded as the worst stop on the world tour because flukey - rather than perfect - conditions are expected. Sure times are changing but The Offsider was unable to resist comparing - in typically irrelevant fashion - Rio's two best waves with the fourteen 10-point rides accounted for at the Quiksilver Pro held in 6-8' G-Land in 1997. Read it and weep, WCT follower: 14 tens! Anyway, following his performance in Brazil, Slater stormed to the top of the ASP standings, not bad for 42-years-old. Fiji is next and with strong potential to provide the sort of epic conditions in which an 11-times world champion can be expected to thrive.
Expect some completely off-the-richter tuberiding.
