Walsh winning. Pic WSL
“I mean I was third with a ten…” Ian Walsh.
“Which ten do you like best?” WSL.
In actual fact, to all who witnessed it, Ian Walsh was not in third in the glorious semi final of the Pe’ahi. He was the clear winner with an almighty piece of surfing that will long live as one of the finest barrel rides in history. With the scale already prescribed by the judges decision to award Ryan Hipwood a ten for an outstanding, although lesser wave, I’d have called a it more a 14.
A 14!
‘You can not have 14!’ I hear you cry. No, well you can’t have two tens when one is way better than the other other can you?
The elephant gun in the room here being this: if it were a standard two man heat, the eventual winner would have walked in the semi.
Bye bye, Walshy.
Of course it all came out in the wash and Walsh went through to the final in third place and onto a well deserved win. But in truth if the wave and heat was correctly scored he should have been first. Hipwood’s ten threw out the whole scoring system.
Nitpicking maybe, but here’s the point. Imagine a similar situation at Pipe in a two man heat. Replace Medina for Hipwood and a struggling rookie for Walsh. It’s a tight heat, a solid eight feet, with the odd bomb. Medina chalks a steady calculated, but perfectly ridden ten early in the heat. He must make it through to keep his title hopes alive. Florence stands watching, world title on the line hoping Medina fails.
Then a gift from Huey: the Pipe bomb. A random beast of natural wonderment. Almost too heavy to ride, yet too mesmerising not to give a go. The requalifying hopeful goes balls to the wall in a bid to save his career.
He takes off late, weightless, frozen in time. His fins grasp for the face, they barely hold as the wave rears like the spectre of global warming. The rider’s face is frozen, his muscles taut, as pure instinct kicks in. He is within the maelstrom, a churning mass of beauty and hell all rolled into one. Like the bunny boiling hotty you fancied in your youth. Dodged that bullet didn’t you? Then he’s gone. In the bowels of the second section, the wave vomits gargantuan spumes of whitewater into the channel… For a split second all is lost. Then our gladiator emerges, blade glistening in the sunlight. Arms aloft, triumphant, adrenaline pumping, spat out with gunslinger claims practically into the Sunset Beach parking lot. “Pow, pow, pow. Yippee-ki-yay motherfucker!”
The crowd go wild. The people of the internet are on their feet. Popcorn is everywhere. Coors Light froths on the living room carpets of mid-America. Babies are woken from their slumber as their carers dance in celebration of a majestic moment in the king of sports. In that moment we are one. Happy, sad or mind blown …
It’s a title deciding, sugar-coated, life saving, dramatically spectacular 10 which puts him into… SECOND PLACE… and UNEMPLOYMENT because the GOD DAMN SCALE IS OUT … A black cloak descends on the world.
The rookie is fucked, his dream destroyed through no fault of his own.
Florence and his title hopes are fucked (for the moment) and his managers and sponsors are going mental. It could be a million-dollar decision for them. A lost chance to further suckle from Nike’s plump breast.
The internet is alight with accusations of favouritism, nationalism and, let’s face it, out and out racism.
The judges are running for their lives hiding behind barricades like Butch and Sundance in their final shoot out. The Hawaiians are coming for them. Not even quaffing vast quantities of JD will calm their nerves.
CARNAGE!
OK … so I got bit carried away. But if the Pe’ahi Challenge semi had been the final a similar fate WOULD have happened.
Pe’ahi was amazing. We watch broadcasts like this for the moments of sublime wave riding of Hipwood and Walsh. But if that was a two man heat one of the greatest waves ever ridden would have counted for nought and the whole thing would of ended in farce. Fact.
The very real lesson learned from all this is that you can not throw out ‘tens’ in surfing competition. Not early in heats, not in this day an age of incredible surfing of both big waves and small by the likes of Dorian, Walsh, Florence, Medina, Toledo or anyone else at this level. Sooner or later the surfers will mug the judges off.
And then what?
All hell breaks loose, credibility is lost, lots of shouting on the internet…
Tens are great for hype, they’re fun, a commentators and PR’s dream, but they also hold the potential to throw out a final or in the worse case, end a title run or a career.
Once you drop a ten, you have nowhere else to go. You can not turn it up to 11. There’s no 10*. The surfer can not make it up next ride and have an extra 0.5 added for old time’s sake. If they do the whole thing ends in acrimony.
We have all seen ‘tens’ dished out and then a better ‘ten’ scored. Events have been lost because of it. Judges can not award the proper points once a ride has fulfilled the scale. And that skews the whole game. Surfing is the only individual sport where different performances can be awarded equal points by judges. It won’t do. I put it to you that tens have no place in our sport.
Walsh’s ten should be the last in WSL history. It was a damn fine wave, a proper ten, and it would be a fine way to end a ridiculous peculiarity.
