Surfing
The John John Florence record is stuck on repeat as the Volcom Pipe Pro is run, won, done.
NORTH SHORE, Oahu -- It’s not that John John Florence needs to prove he’s the man at Pipeline, but there’s no doubt he’ll be submitting supporting evidence for years to come. In just the contest’s seventh year Florence today added his fourth Volcom Pipe Pro crown to further reinforce his dominance at the surfing world’s most famed stretch of reef.
In the event’s history there have been but three winners: Florence, Jamie O’Brien (2) and Kelly Slater (1), further emphasizing the stranglehold of the three talents at Pipeline over the last decade.
After three frenetic and furious days of early competition, Super Bowl Monday morning dawned sick and slow. With nasty Kona winds forecast to tear the North Shore apart till the end of the waiting period and Backdoor providing overhead tubes and meaty ramps, the decision to run was an easy one.
Nine Hawaiians, three Americans, a Brazilian, a Spaniard, a Japanese and a Puerto Rican made up the quarter finals (um, what happened Australia?), and with the exception of Kelly, Kolohe Andino, and Masatoshi Ohno, it was an all-Hawaiian affair come the semis. Long backdoor drainers were the order of the day, though Florence, Slater and Mason Ho all felt the need to punctuate scores with wildly flung aerials. Results were mixed, but crowd pleasers are such named for a reason.
Naturally Slater threaded the days longest and drainiest and logged the only perfect 10 for the competition in the process. He was later honored with the Todd Chesser Memorial Award, given to the event’s hardest charger. In an emotional moment on stage, Slater told Jeanie Chesser (Todd’s mother) that his board art had Todd’s name written out hundreds of times, and the champ himself was clearly a little choked up.
In the end, as conditions crumbled, it was Florence who took the win from crowd favorite Mason Ho, who came up close on a buzzer-beater. Slater and Sebastian Zietz took a distant third and fourth respectively. As if to confirm that Florence could win Pipe in his sleep, he half lifted his arms to the sky, barely donned his warrior helmet trophy, and mumbled a couple of inaudible lines to the crowd before collecting his check and heading home. This week Mason Ho was overheard saying his aim in life was to "talk quiet and surf loud," and today John John Florence did exactly that. Again.