I thought it was pretty good. Taj definately deserved this win. Although everyone will argue Slaters tube should have been scored higher, it still would not have been enough to beat Taj. He kept busy and you know this is sweet for him, especially remembering their final at Trestles... I guess 90,000 dollars aint bad either. Plus you know Billabong will hook him up for this...
yeah kelly's stall was sick. he's def. should have gotten more than a 3.93. that was bullspit. i'm stoked for taj though, he needed a big win, he's deserved it for a while.
kelly's tube was definitely under scored but taj's air reverse was not worth a 5.83 that was the only manuever he did on that wave. ****ty final
Kelly's wave was crazy and underscored ..but taj's turns and airs in that bad of conditions were sick and overall he deserved the win.. but if kelly had stuck last air on the interference wave.. it woulda been sick
ya, ashame the conditions were like that for the final heat. But, thats the way it goes. I agree, they def. underscored Kelly on that backdoor barrel. But, I dont think that changed the outcome.
All together that was such a sick triple crown series. Also with the Eddie running before pipe, and the first 2 days of pipe...I couldnt have asked for a better way to kill entire days at work watching the triple crown. very very stoked on Taj's win, also stoked to see dane do as well as he did. Kelly ripped like usual, but I really think Taj deserved a big win like this. He also deserves a world title. Maybe this win will be the confidence he needed.
They really ought to have a set of rules regarding conditions for the pipe finals. IT should always be 'classic' pipe for the finals at least. when the highest scoring wave was a 7.00 that speaks volumes to condition. Also, how does Taj 'deserve' a title? He obviously doesn't or he would have won one by now.
Rounds 3 and 4 were amazing to watch live. John John getting so deep and casually waving as he get's blown out was so cool. It was disappointing to see the conditions deteriorate but they were up against their time window with deteriorating wind conditions. Taj definitely surfed the final more like Kelly than Kelly... lot's of waves, building his scores up, to the point where Kelly had to look for a 9 in pretty tough conditions. His stall was sick, esp. the drop into the stall!
They had to run the event before the 20th, and the next few days will be junk... They could have started heats at 8:00 am , instead of 9:00, but I think they were also being compliant with planning a time for Fuel TV to run the final on TV.
yeah but I think that hurt them. If i didn't know anything about surfing and watched that final I would have been thinking 'what a boring sport!'
true, but if you watched rounds 3 and 4 and didn't know anything about surfing, you would know those guys are bad asses. And that they paid a price when trying to make something happen late. We were all really lucky to have a very solid swell for most of the contest, bad luck that it didn't hold for the finals... some things are out of our control
There are definitely some challenges to getting broadcasting live on TV, since events have so many heats, and can take quite a while. Even breaking it down to the quarters, semis, and finals takes about 3 hours, and there needs to be breaks in between the semis and finals. I can see down the line, sort of like Golf coverage, where they broadcast the quarters to the finals. They just need some filler to put in place for the respite between the semis and finals. The asp broadcasts are really well done... and definitely distract me a lot from getting work done. It would def be awesome to see more TV coverage. Am I correct that events get Broadcast coverage in Australia?
i was watching the webcast at work for the entire event. when i got home, i turned on fuel and the final was being broadcasted. pretty sweet to see surfing live on my big tv.
Yeah Micah, I heard them welcome viewers from Oz even though it was wicked early there, they were live. Pretty cool, especially since this year J-Bay, The Eddie and Pipe had such great waves.
