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Surf Contest 101

November 17, 2017
Surfing Move

Maybe you’ve been to a surf contest before or you’ve watched one from your computer and you had no idea surfing even had contests. Regardless of your experience with the contest world, this blog will hopefully inform you of how they work. We will divulge information to you on different details such as surf lessons, scoring. Also in addition, it brings you up to speed on the latest rankings for the Championship World Tour at the professional league.

Surfing Contest

In a surfing contest, panel of judges decided wins and losses. Professional surfing contests put athletes in surfer-on-surfer, three-surfer or four-surfer heats. After that, the winner of the heat or the two best surfers in each heat, advances through to the next round, in a ladder tournament format.

Surf Trick

According to the World Surf League, the organization behind professional surf contests. The game plays out according to the following rules:

  1. A panel of five judges dissects the surfers’ performances;
  2. Heat times may vary between 20 and 35 minutes
  3. A wave is scored on a scale of one to ten, with two decimal places;
  4. Surfers lock in their two highest-scoring waves;
  5. For each ride, the highest and lowest scores (of the five judges) are discounted. The surfer is awarded the average of the remaining three scores.
  6. There are no limits to the number of waves that can be ridden;
  7. A perfect heat is when a surfer gets a total score of 20 points;

surfing, waves, paradise-2686393.jpg

Judging surfing is always a subjective verdict. Nevertheless, On the basis of surfers, professional judges make their assessments. They throw scores for waves ridden which is based on five major criteria. Here’s the breakdown of winning a heat:

  1. Commitment and degree of difficulty
  2. Innovative and progressive maneuvers
  3. Combination of major maneuvers
  4. Variety of maneuvers
  5. Speed, power, and flow
The surf contest judging scale can be translated into qualitative terms:
  • 0.00 to 1.90 > Poor Wave Ride
  • 2.00 to 3.90 > Fair Wave Ride
  • 4.00 to 5.90 > Average Wave Ride
  • 6.00 to 7.90 > Good Wave Ride
  • 8.00 to 10.00 > Excellent Wave Ride
Surf judges don’t talk to each other and don’t change scores. If a surfer needs to know the scores, he should raise his/her hand.
If you look above you can see the top five female and male professional surfers in the current World Tour. Winning this surf contest is a major accomplishment for professional surfers. The next stop on the World Tour for the men is the Billabong Pipe Masters. It is located at Banzai Pipeline, Oahu, Hawaii from December 8th through the 20th. And the women’s next stop is Maui Women’s Pro. That is in Honolua Bay, Maui, Hawaii November 25th through December 6th. These competitions can both be streamed live on the WSL website.
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