billabong-pro-tahiti-mfanning
The Australian came back empty-handed from Tahiti. The defending champion was stopped in the semifinal this time, ousted by Buchan. Leader of the World Tour, "White Lightning" gave up his throne to Slater. In short, the two-time world champion has seen greener pastures. Looking closer, everything is not so negative for the Aussie surfer. Forced to go through the repecharge rounds, Fanning was more than once close to being defeated–first in round three against injury-replacement surfer Ian Walsh where his perfect 10 barrel in the dying minutes allowed him to escape elimination, then in the fifth round when he finally came out of his lethargy in the final five minutes to overwhelm Flores. In a nutshell, it could have been much worse for the Australian, now world number two by a handful of points (1050) to Slater, and whose extreme regularity in final phases (one final, three semis and two quarters) without ever clinching a title strangely recalls the story of Parkinson last year.
Surfagram co-founder Nykola Duma.
Journalist Vincent Martin.
Not included in the Top 34 analysis: Owen Wright (AUS), Tiago Pires (PRT), Dusty Payne (HAW) and Glenn Hall (IRL) who was wounded and missing in Teahupoo, Raoni Monteiro (BRA) who was unable to finance his trip to Tahiti lacking sponsors. Their replacements were Yadin Nicol (AUS), Pat Gudauskas (USA), Jocelyn Poulou (PYF), Nathan Hedge (AUS) and Ian Walsh (HAW) and the two wildcards from the trials: Alain Riou (PYF) and Anthony Walsh (AUS).
Editor’s Note: This article is a collaborative work between Vincent Martin and the Surfagram team (Nykola Duma & Pierre-Arnaud Marcelot). Vincent is a journalist and runs the popular French surf website Planète Surf. Nykola is a graphic designer and art director and Pierre-Arnaud is a software engineer. Together, they created Surfagram–a fun and visual way to look at ASP World Tour results and statistics on contests and surfers.