Kelly Slater, Bobby Martinez and Dane Reynolds were no-shows at the Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay competition, won Sunday by Jordy Smith before a hometown South African crowd.
The Assn. of Surfing Professionals, obviously, was not pleased, and according to ESPN it's considering an increase in fines for athletes who skip future competitions, without sufficient explanation, from $5,000 to as much as $50,000.
That'd be an appropriate response because the surfers, as World Tour competitors, are obligated to the tour and fans of elite-level competitive surfing. This kind of flakiness diminishes the tour's credibility.
Slater, 39, a 10-time world champion and the second-oldest competitor on the tour, apparently was surfing a huge swell in Fiji and chose to skip the first round of the J-Bay event, hoping he could still make it to South Africa in time for the losers' bracket second round.
"Seems Slater had a genuine desire to forfeit the first round, which in a World Tour event is a non-elimination round. He hoped to surf his way from round two, but rolled the dice and lost when it was run earlier than he thought," wrote Peter "Joli" Wilson for ESPN.
Perhaps Slater ought to simply retire. He no longer needs the tour and the tour is going to have to get used to his absence soon enough, anyway. He dropped to No. 6 in the rankings after the J-Bay contest and has a substantial hill to climb in order to get past Smith, top-rated Joel Parkinson and three other devoted tour competitors.
If Slater wins or has a high result in the next contest, the Billabong Pro in Tahiti, his title aspirations will remain realistic. If he has a bad result and falls farther behind, he might lose interest in the remainder of the 2011 schedule.
As for Martinez, 29, he's seemingly burned out and will be hard-pressed to make the mid-season roster cut to 32. He's currently ranked No. 22 on the World Tour but only 48th on the World Rankings, which will be used to determine who makes the cut. The cut will be made after the next two contests.
Dane Reynolds, 25, has been injured and apparently used that injury to explain his absence at J-Bay. But he was filmed surfing in Mexico recently, in a video that went public, and the ASP is reviewing the case.
Reynolds, at No. 17 in the World Rankings, is likely to make the roster cut. The question, however, is whether he wants to stay on the tour or earn his sponsorship money in a less-grueling fashion, by free-surfing for magazine and video exposure.
Reynolds, in his fourth year, had his best tour finish last year (No. 4), but he has never seemed to show strong world title aspirations. Much of his success has come as a result of sheer talent, versus determination.
Expect the spotlight to be on all three U.S. surfers and especially Slater, if they show, at the Tahiti contest.
-- Image shows Kelly Slater after he clinched a 10th ASP World title last November in Puerto Rico. Credit: Kirstin Scholtz / ASP
In this statement, " He dropped to No. 6 in the rankings after the J-Bay contest ". It's okay, that's life. You are not always at the top, you should be at down too to learn more things in Life.
Posted by: 300 Spartanworkouts | Jul 26, 2011 at 12:42 AM