It seems the ASP has made a blunder of the highest embarrassment in sport for a long time. Sporting blunders happen regularly but a blunder of this magnitude by a governing body is something that should never happen. The ASP will now go on to be my second Poor Form nomination for the year.
How can an organisation not understand it's own guidelines when working out who has won the World Title. Surely this is something that they would have sat down and worked out before the tournament in San Francisco. Slater will most likely go on and win the title but it is no guarantee.
Surfing is a sport I enjoy watching but will never understand the way in which it is judged. It is said by the association:
"Our rankings system is designed to split tie-breaks based off seed points,'' said Renato Hickel, ASP World Tour manager.
"Kelly and Owen tied at best nine of 11 results, so we went to best eight of 11 results and the system gave it to Kelly based off his higher seed position. We were operating under that assumption and created the ASP world title scenarios based off that. This was a mistake."
Surely if you have a tie between two players the lower seeded player has performed better. Then again why should seeding come into it. It is possible to have joint winners. Seeding is only designed to place competitors for a competition, after that it is up to the competitors to rely on their skills. So on that the advantage of being seeded has served it's purpose and should never be used to decide a World Champion on a years effort. There is no way that you can honestly tell me that winning an equal amount of heats can be seen as better for one over the other.Admittedly Slater is great so equaling him should be seen as just a great.
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