ASP World Tour: February 2009 Archives

The website for one of the hottest talents in the surfing world, Jordy Smith, has gone live! As of right now Jordy is in Australia, eagerly gearing up for his 2009 World Tour campaign and the start of the Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast presented by LG.

So, while we all wait for the swell to hit Snapper and Jordy to bust out, here's a little bit about the new site: It features sick video and photo sections of Jordy doing his thing all around the world. There's also an up-to-the-minute blog and news section so you can chart all the ramblings and wanderings of South Africa's prodigal son. Besides that, find Jordy's profile, biography, as well as his growing list of sponsors, all set to the sounds of some his favourite tunes. But enought of that, what are you waiting for? Click on over to www.jordy-smith.co.za  and explore for yourself.

Stay tuned as RedBullSurfing.com dishes the dirt from the Quiksilver Pro.

Funny thing about being the only representative from your country to make the World Tour, people tend to want to find out just how you're dealing with the pressure. Well, Michel Bourez seems to be cruising through it all, smiling, laughing and having a hell of a time. Michel was recently pinned down by the folks at Transworld Surf and asked all about all that's going on in his world. Read the full interview here.

COOLANGATTA, Australia (Wednesday, February 25, 2009) - With only three days remaining before the Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast pres. By LG launches the 2009 ASP World Tour launches, our European bloggers are currently training at Snapper Rocks. Tim Boal (Anglet, FRA), 25, will be one of three European rookies in Round 1 of the first event and could bring some good surprises if clean waves start rolling over the Superbank. Boal, who suffered a foot injury for three months this winter, has been training on the Gold Coast for a couple of weeks now and it seems like the French Basque surfer is definitely ready to compete against the world's best. Check out Boal's thoughts...
 
"After a long winter and two months away from the ocean, I had a lot of time to think and do other stuff and I must say I had a good time. Being away from contests and surfing has been good, and it made so much happier to get back to work and restart surfing and training. I am definitely feeling good right now after the winter and happy to be back into shape. I feel refreshed and am looking forward to competing again. My foot is 100% back to normal and I have been surfing a couple of times every day since I got to the Gold Coast.

SYDNEY, Australia (Sunday, February 22, 2009) - At 27-years-old, Tiago Pires (Ericeira, PRT) a.k.a Sacca is a national hero in Portugal since he became the first Portuguese surfer ever to qualify for the ASP World Tour in 2008. Pires, who ended his rookie season outside the requalifying squad despite some stellar performances throughout the year, still managed to regain his ticket for the elite division thanks to an ASP World Qualifying Series (WQS) campaign and will be in the starting blocks when the Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast starts next week. He is the third man of the unprecedent 7-European team on tour to give us pieces of life since we left him in Hawaii after he pulled out from the Billabong Pipeline Masters. After a deserved winter break and tough training sessions, Portugal's undisputed surf leader sends some news from Sydney...

"This winter was divided in two for me! The first two or three weeks I went on a vacation away from the ocean, to visit some nice cities like Oslo and Moscow! I could not surf so it was being a bit frustrating to stay at home and watch perfect pits going by. The second part of my winter was pretty much an intense recovery program, in which I had to spend a lot of time in physiotherapy before I started to train at the Gym. I an now part of a new training group led by the Portuguese Rugby Team Coach and the result of this new partnership is that I have never been so stoked and so motivated to improve my fitness! Apart from that, I also enjoyed spending time at home with my family and friends... It was weird to spend two months at home actually, I started to feel like a normal person!

With the start of the 2009 ASP World Tour just a week away, the surf media has busied itself conducting interviews, chasing various leads, and speculating on the merits of this year's rookie class. In the last week both ESPN Surfing and Surfline.com have pulled back the curtain on the new crop of surfers that are jumping onto the world's stage, and with Red Bull's Tim Boal and Michel Bourez part of this rookie class we figured you might want to take a look at what's being said. Some of it's gushing and full of compliments, some of it's kind of brutal, but either way, you're going to be seeing a lot more of Tim and Michel in the coming year, so you'd better start familiarizing yourself with them.

Read ESPN Surfing's 2009 Rookie Preview

Read Surfline's 2009 Rookie Preview

This winter, just as the ink was drying on his new contract with Red Bull, Jordy Smith found himself in the final at Sunset. On his first wave he "got compressed" and essentially destroyed his knee. The 21-year-old South African has since spent the last two months rehabbing, crawling in and out of a hyperbaric chamber, and now with the tour just a couple weeks away from kicking off, he's back in the water. We caught up with Jordy to talk about joining Red Bull, what happened at Sunset, and his plans for next years.

I guess before we get into it, welcome to the family.
Thanks. To be part of Red Bull, it's amazing. The surf team and all the opportunities it affords me, it's like a dream come true. I'll be a part of all kinds of crazy things, I can't wait. Plus, it's a great company. The support is phenomenal. The surf team's not too shabby either. A crew of the best surfers in the world, what more could you ask for?

Do you have anything special in the works?
Well, there's my own site that's being worked on, so that'll be cool when we get that together. Other than that, there's so much on offer it's kind of hard to pick. The tour starts soon, so that's where my focus is, but I'll be doing with training and surf trips with Red Bull, for sure.