Kelly Slater wins The Boost Mobile Pro at Trestles, California USA. His fifth event win out of the seven!
Kelly surfed against the odds to pull one of the biggest comebacks ever seen in surfing history to beat the in-form Taj Burrows. Taj had two great rides early in the final and his scores of 9.00 and 9.63 put Kelly in a combo situation. Kelly was left searching for two world-class rides just to save face, nevermind win. With all the work to do, Kelly laid everything on a rail, in the air and put his turns in reverse to manage a comeback from a seemingly impossible position. He scored a 9.70 then, in the dying seconds, Taj made the fatal error of allowing Kelly to catch a smaller wave, which proved to put the final nail in his own coffin. Kelly thoroughly destroyed the smaller wave, surfing with huge, committed and radical turns. His score of 9.27 met his requirements and he stole the win in true Slater style.
Kelly Slater had been having a great week. He won the Surfer magazine Poll for the 11th time. He scored the first 10-point wave and numerous 9-point waves at Trestles, in what turned out to be one of the highlight locations of the ASP World Tour this year. Besides the invaluable points, Kelly walked away with a massive 75,000$ cheque due to the additional generosity of the event sponsors.
French star and highest placed European surfer, Jeremy Flores, went into the event recovering from an ankle injury rated 13th but rose to 10th after his fantastic semi-final result. He earned his quarterfinal spot in the last ten seconds of his 4th round heat against reigning World Champion Mick Fanning. Jeremy pulled a radical high speed reverse to score 8.5 points. Jeremy then bettered it with a 9.07, linking fast-flowing combination turns that put Mick on the back foot. Jeremy said, "To beat the best, there is no better feeling than that." His semi-final placing matched his best result of the year, a 3rd at the Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast event. Jeremy will continue his momentum straight into the next event at his home venue in SW France.
Dane Reynolds (rated 26th before but rose to 20th after the event) was the third Quiksilver rider to make it through to the final day of the event. He had already pulled out some amazing performances in the early rounds including a 9.77 wave score. He is renowned as one of the best free-surfers, having just won the best manoeuvre at the prestigious Surfer Poll awards, but hadn't yet put in a contest performance worthy of his level. He said, "I try to do a trick 60 times, make it once and get an award for it!"
Miky Picon had a 17th place finish losing out by 0.9 points in Round 3, even though he won his first heat. The result will better his rating and count towards his year-end result. Aritz finished 33rd and lost to Bruce Irons, the previous event winner. Both surfers can now look forward to home-crowd support when they compete in Europe in the coming fortnight.
Gabe Davies
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