WSl Trestles: Kelly’s Air and Subsequent Score

The wave in question

For me they scored it correctly.  Rightly or wrongly within the current rules of surfing there’s a few reasons why it was scored the way it was.

First up your hands have to leave the rails to begin to score points on a wave. 

Secondly an incomplete move scores bugger all, usually in the sub 1.5 category, that goes for enormous airs and unmade really long barrels, if you don’t ride out on your feet it counts for almost nothing. 

Kelly took off, went huge, stuffed it up and ended up laying down on his board again in the whitewash, score 1.27.  When he stands up again, it’s on a very small wave halfway out, he then does a very small setup turn, a quick flick backside 3, a wonky reo and then finally a decent top to bottom vert reo, score the last part a 3.33.

Is the wave worth more than the sum of it’s parts?  Perhaps in a freesurf but not in a comp IMO.  Crowd entertainment factor was huge, good to excellent score in a WSL event, definitely not. 

EDIT:  And then like a dumbass i go and vote NO ha ha. EDIT: Fixed your stuff up mate Azz

I voted yes, cause by the guidelines that’s what the wave/s should’ve been scored as per the rules!!!!!

Should it have been a higher score in a different set of circumstances????? Hell yeah!!!!!

I am not up on the way they score surfing, but by god it looked sick

Now that i heard the break down by Kelly and Richie Porta, I guess in all fairness it was scored fairly as it was deemed an incomplete manoeuvre.

Still the thing looked amazing and the peoples score was far much higher than the judges score

It would have scored huge in an expression session but not in a comp as we saw.

I have been so caught up with the snow, getting waves and chasing a girl that I haven’t given pro surfing (or any media) much attention lately. My mum told me about Slaters air the day after it happened.