ASP World Tour: October 2008 Archives

Landing a solid third place finish at the 6-star Rio Surf International, held at Brazil's Arpoador Beach, Michel Bourez inches ever closer to his goal of joining the world's best surfers on the 2009 ASP World Tour. Locking down 1875 points for the result in Brazil, he's now moved up to 10th place in the WQS rankings. What exactly does this mean for the Tahitian upstart? Well, for one, at the end of the 2008 WQS season the top 14 athletes qualify for the World Tour. This means if nothing too dramatic happens in the home stretch Michel's qualification is as good as set. This makes him the second participant of Red Bull Rising program to qualify this year, after his mate Tim Boal, who's currently ranked 5th in the WQS. Click here to find out more about Red Bull Rising.

Last year Sofia made a hard end-of-the-year charge in 2007 for the women's ASP world title, ultimately finishing runner-up. What a difference a year makes. She's back and standing on top of ratings. By clamping down a solid third-place showing at the Beachley Classic, stop number five of eight on tour, Mulanovich is now 463 points ahead of the pack.

Succumbing to a minor injury in the semifinals, that all-important first place ranking was secured earlier in the contest after Stephanie Gilmore lost in round three to 14-year-old Tyler Wright--who would actually go on to crush everybody, win the event, and make history as the youngest surfer to ever win an ASP event.

Ladies and gentlemen, the ASP's European swing is officially over. Setting the pace for the Red Bull crew was Brazil's Adriano De Souza, who's kept his career year raging. With a semifinal finish at the Quiksilver Pro France, and now a quarterfinal finish at the Billabong Pro Mundaka, Adriano has secured his spot as one of the top five surfers in the world. "That was a goal of mine this year," told Adriano. "I wanted to finish in the top five at the end of the year. I put in a lot of hard work training and working at it, but now I'm seeing the results and that's very good."

The rain fell, the tide dropped, and the waves pumped. After a near-tragic day yesterday, the Billabong Pro Mundaka found itself on remarkably better footing today. "It was unreal out there," cackled Parko after making his Round 3 heat, that classic shit-eating grin stretching from ear to ear. Four-to six-foot double-ups were aplenty, but for as good as the surf was, maybe the best call of the day came when organizers implemented the overlapping format, which for those of you who haven't been paying attention means that basically two heats are run concurrently with priority going to one pair of surfers for the first 20 minutes of the heat, then changing the second 20 mintues. "For a place like Mundaka, it's perfect," explained Adriano De Souza at day's end. "You can get 16 heats done in almost the same time as 8 heats, which means you can maximize the conditions."

I've got some good news and some bad from the Billabong Pro Mundaka. First the good: Round 1 is done and over. Kelly won, and now stands one heat away from claiming his ninth world title. Now the bad: The Red Bull crew had mixed results today. With Andy, Bruce and Mick absent fromt he competition, Round One saw Adriano De Souza, Ben Dunn and Royden Bryson stumble. Tiago Pires would be the only bright spot in arguably the worst day of surf in Dream Tour history. Last year's Mundaka contest was a rough one, and with all but the final taking place up the road at Bakio it had most of the ASP Top 45 begging not to come back. But Billabong staff and contest organizers figured they'd remedied the situation by moving the alternate site an hour away to a beachbreak near the town of Sopelana. Well folks, this call was 10 times worse than last years. It was miserable.