Days after the Surf Ranch Pro, held at Kelly Slater’s wavepool in Lemoore, CA, controversy still looms around a few contentious calls from the judging panel.
First, there’s Gabriel Medina, who narrowly lost in the quarterfinals to Ethan Ewing. Gabby later penned a scathing open letter to the WSL. Then, there was the final, which saw Griffin Colapinto triumph over Italo Ferreira – and after, Italo and Filipe Toledo joined Medina, their fellow Brazilian countryman, in voicing concerns.
And now, someone put together a side-by-side video recap of the final, with many fans supporting the stance that the WSL judges were…a bit off.
The video comes from Old Surf Dad, who captioned it as such:
“Here is an unbiased side by side comparison. You be the judge. Who won the Finals? Let us know in the comments below.”
And while the video is “unbiased,” Old Surf Dad had an opinion in the comments:
“For the record, I thought Italo was underscored.”
So did a lot of other people:
“Griffin is one of my favorite surfers at the moment, but Italo won that final.”
“judges messed it up. pretty clear to see. Italo’s first right was underscored and griff’s first right overscored.”
“Love Griffin, but those two rights of Italo’s were definitely underscored, I was left scratching my head big time when the scores came through.”
You get the point. The comments go on and on – hundreds of ‘em – with most of them unanimous in saying that Griffin was overscored, Italo under.
But that’s sports. And even in a wavepool, where the inherent subjectivity factor of pro surfing is supposed to be minimized, there’s still, apparently, bias.
Up next, the Tour heads to El Salvador kicking off June 9th-18th – an event which, last year, Griffin beat Filipe in the final, and Gabby and Italo made the semis. Yeah, that means this debate isn’t over; the drama continues.
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