Events

(Friday, July 9th, 2010) Defending event champion and Billabong surfer, Joel Parkinson (29, Gold Coast, Qld AUS), has officially pulled out of next week’s Billabong Pro at Jeffreys Bay, South Africa, after badly slicing his foot while surfing at Snapper Rocks today.

It´s been a hard day for me, but here´s my version of what happened as published on wavescape.co.za. Working on some slideshow highlights in the meantime. Coverage of the event by Zigzag was epic and Silver Bullet Productions did an amazing job by uploading timely highlight clips of every heat. In fact, by twelve o´clock South African time they were all loaded on Youtube.

Ryan Payne solidified his reputation as the Supertubes specialist with this second victory in the Xcel PRO Showdown at Supertubes. The Xcel PRO Showdown at Supertubes is a specialty event where standout surfers at Supertubes are invited to take part in an exclusive showdown with the winner awarded a wild card entry into the Billabong PRO event.

Just got the sms. Conditions looking good for tomorrow, meet at Supers by 8:30. Making next call tomorrow morning. We are all holding thumbs.

Looks like we are in for a good run of swell this week, with forecasts of up to 27ft open sea and all the right swell directions and periods etc. The Xcel Showdown is on standby for Tuesday. As I read between the lines and listen to the talk in the line-up, the size of the surf is not that important, it is just that it must have good barrels and ideally it should be between 4 and 6 ft. The jetski will also make a huge difference if the surf is on the heavy side. If it goes towards 8ft it it gets a little out of hand. We´ll just have to wait and see. I know lots of us in J-Bay (Not just the contestants) are amping for the day. Bring it on!