…does anyone know if Taj Burrow rode his ‘Firewire’ board in the final against Mick Fanning ?
I ask , because the commentators didn’t seem to know , or make it clear …
Also , Kelly Slater had some interesting comments on the board .
(I will see , if the video is up , if it is possible to get a ‘link’ to it ? )
cheers,
ben
He was riding his firewire and he didnt look like he could get much projection and bogged through some of his top and bottom turns.
It also seemed he didnt get the lenght out of his floaters .Some of his snaps were amazing but he it looked like he was having trouble linking and getting stuck. Mick surfed solid and looked more confident on his feet.Taj didnt look happy .
I didn’t see the final - but in the heats he had none of those problems, He was getting tons of speed of the bottom and doing lightening fast precise turns off the top. I thought his surfing looked sharper and faster on the new board, although I did see him catching surface chop on a bottom turn which blew his timing on one wave. I don’t think there is much between Fanning and Burrows on any day, but after two heats in succession - Fanning was just fitter and more focussed.
Yep, “firewire”. it feels nice that the pro’s are just discovering this, and we were amoungst the first to see the new board craze in the “vacuum bagging” thread long ago. i love swaylocks.
aussie aussie aussie
oi oi oi
actually a world title
might just even the playing field for comopsites
bert and josh must be frothing
pitty hes not around to share the stoke
Good days, bad days, fitness, biorythms, who cares, there’s only one winner.
Were all the other competitors riding bad boards?
Not only that, but TB is in a really good place to contend for a title. Its gotta be a mental thing he just cant pull out the win in finals. Personally, I think he’s missing some power that others seem to have…he’s got all the moves, just lacking power.
Cool board tho…I wonder who’s makin’m?
Fanning got down here early, surfing in marginal conditions when not many others bothered. He exudes a tremendous athletic energy on the beach and in the water. Taj surfed great and it would be interesting to get his take on the board, but Fanning was really on and I reckon the board was not a determining factor in the end.
Roger
Mick Fanning won the final by …
.9 of a point , apparently .
it was a great final , some unreal surfing !
Also , the guy who blew my mind was 18yo Jordy Smith from south africa . If you get a chance , click onto the footage of him on the billabong j-bay contest site .
… as everyone was saying in the commentary box , “I think we will be hearing lots more of him !”
ben
I think Taj’s problem (at least vs. Fanning and other powerful surfers) is that he’s so freakin’ fast that he’s not in the fabled “critical” part of the wave as much as others are. I watched Fanning and he’s strong enough to just power through closeout tubes and do foamball reo’s the whole wave. Taj, otoh, was just skating around the closeout sections. lack of focus, perhaps, but it seems his style isn’t doing him any favors with the judges. His freesurfs are absolutely mindblowing.
I thought his board looked like it was chattering during some of the better rides he had. It might have been that there was more stiffness on the rail than he was used to.
Taj lost becuase he fell on two waves that could’ve delivered the 9.0 he needed to win. I think that’s more of a mind thing - Slater or AI for example, probably wouldn’t have blown those waves. Nerves and a bit of fatigue cost him the final, but throughout the contest he was ripping, I don’t think you could say there were any flaws in his surfing you could attribute to the board - This is a WCT contest - you don’t get into a final if you’re not surfing at your best. You don’t surf at your best if you are unhappy with your equipment.
Taking a new technology and then tuning the shapes to the point where a guy can surf WCT finals in what six months? that’s quite an achievement. It takes PU/PE shapers years to tune their shapes to that level and that’s with technology where everything is known.
What he said–major major achievment for Bert and Co. I’d be interested to know what Slater is saying.
ausise aussie aussie!
oy oy oy
i can see a world title
go taj
we love you
we love kelly
but how many world title does a guy need
go taj
go bert
What were the interesting things Kelly had to say about the board? I missed the webcast.
I wished I coulda taped it . now it’s from memory , but it was along the lines of
that he [kelly] thought the board looked god , and he noticed that with the sideshore wind in the final [and ? possibly? Taj’s lighter weight that the board “seemed to skip” on some bottom turns , and a bit of extra weight actually could have come in handy in those conditions"
I woulda loved to see Andy Irons or Kelly or Pancho , possibly Taylor Knox , and yes …Mick Fanning , Occy , and “Parko” , sharing Taj’s board during free surfs , and someone filming it ,
as I reckon it would have been a GREAT opportunity to see it in good point break waves , under the feet of different physique and styles of surfers , and to have been able to see , in ultra slow motion if neccessary , exactly what the board WAS doing in different parts of the waves. But that’s just my take on things … ( and I am just a pleb .)
cheers
ben