Slavepools also for the girls.
I’ll be honest, I did not watch one minute of the Surf
Abu Dhabi finals day nor do I plan to. The event was, of
course, wonderful as farce but offered little in the way of actual
entertainment for the serious minded. That aside, Italo Ferreira
surprised zero people by winning the men’s side. Caitlin Simmers,
though, a more interesting story with her taking out the
women’s.
In trying to find a clip of the Oceanside phenom being hoisted
high, I accidentally heard Joe Turpel say that she had “shown the
judges something different” to which Felicity Palmateer said
something about the 400 waves ridden that day and how it can’t help
but look monotonous.
No way 400 waves for finals day, right? Flick must have been
speaking about the entire event?
Well, Simmers came up against Molly Picklum in the last frame
and appears to have walloped her pretty good. The two sit at one,
two, respectively, but the future seems brighter for the
carrot-topped current world champion. Simmers can win in big
barreling waves, she can win on running points, she can win on high
performance beachbreaks and she can, apparently, win in slavepools.
At just 19 years of age, how many titles do you imagine she has in
her? Or is the new thing to win three and then “take a break”
forever?
In any case, Tyler Wright did not get stoned but she did fall to
third place after dropping out early and it can only be imagined
that she will continue to fade away.
The future of professional surfing is, truly, in Simmers grasp
and if the World Surf League had any smarts, it would run a
specialty heat featuring her versus Philip Toledo at Pipeline a la
Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs’ “Battle of the Sexes.”
How good would that be?
Full event recaps from Jen See and JP Currie coming soon.
