Everyone got dizzy with excitement when Gabriel Medina back-flipped his way into round three in Rio but does the very fact he came via a repechage round mean he is less likely to go on and win the event? And what score will he need to shoot for if he makes it all the way to the final and wants to claim the ultimate prize? The stats below give some insight into these and many other mathematical questions associated with winning world tour events.
All Stats Courtesy Of surfagram.com
– Number of 10’s given for the past 4 years
- Men
– 2012: 25
– 2013: 27 (including two Perfect 20 heats for Kelly Slater & Joel Parkinson)
– 2014: 17
– 2015: 19 (including two Perfect 20 heats for Owen Wright)
- Women
– 2012: 2
– 2013: 5
– 2014: 2
– 2015: 4
If there’s a pattern here for the men it suggests that the judges have gotten a little stingier with those fabulous double-digit scores in recent times. Perhaps performance levels have evolved in the last three years making what constitutes perfection an entirely different thing in the judges’ eyes. There are fewer girls surfing and fewer total heats surfed so it makes sense for them to have less tens but even so it seems like the sistas have to work dam hard to secure the big numbers.
Number of Perfect 10s for World Champions in the year they won the title.
– 2012 (Joel Parkinson) : 2
– 2013 (Mick Fanning) : 1
– 2014 (Gabriel Medina) : 1
– 2015 (Adriano De Souza) : 0
One might expect a world champion’s scored card to be littered with ten point rides. These numbers suggest that consistency and not home runs are crucial to winning titles. If you get one 10 in a world title year you’ve done well.
– Overall Average Winning Heat for the past 4 years
- Men
– 2012: 14.72
– 2013: 15.16
– 2014: 14.12
– 2015: 14.32
- Women
– 2012: 14.45
– 2013: 14.99
– 2014: 14.21
– 2015: 14.83
If you are a pro surfer or coach these numbers should probably be soldered into your psyche. Each heat has its own story to tell and its own circumstances to respond to but the stats suggest that for the men and women a pair of 7.5’s will get you over the line most of the time. You can train to score two 7.5’s; build your whole act around it and know that it will likely be a winning formula. Look at the guys and girls who have won titles in the last few years – Fanning, Medina, Moore, Gilmore and Adriano. Occasionally they went nuts on single waves but they also mastered the art of scoring a pair of seven plus rides.
– Overall Average Winning Heat *in Final* for the past 4 years
- Men
– 2012: 16.83
– 2013: 16.75
– 2014: 16.80
– 2015: 17.59
- Women
– 2012: 14.22
– 2013: 15.03
– 2014: 16.01
– 2015: 16.50
These numbers indicate that surfers do actually step things up in finals.You want to take the trophy home you’ve got to be about two points better than the average winning heat total. In 2015 that number soared even higher on both tours, suggesting finals are increasingly becoming the place to bring your a-game.
– Average winning score per round between 2012 & 2015
– Round 1: 14.29
– Round 2: 13.79
– Round 3: 14.60
– Round 4: 15.63
– Round 5: 14.57
– Quarter-Final: 15.20
– Semi-Final: 15.90
– Final : 16.99
There’s a spike in round one and another spike in round four. The fact that these non-elimination rounds provide surfers with a safety net encourages greater risk. Some people hate the non-elimination rounds –particularly round four – but the numbers suggest they do encourage a higher standard of surfing in the early rounds. However, it’s interesting that round four, the so-called free surfing round, doesn’t eclipse the semis or finals for average winning scores. The surfers are still saving their best for the finals and podium heats and striving to peak when it really matters.
– Correlation between Event Wins and Round 4 & Round 1 Wins. Therefore what percentage of surfers won in rounds one or round four and went on to win the contest.
- 2012
– Round 4 (8/10) = 80%
- Round 1 (5/9) = 56%
– 2013
- Round 4 (4/10) = 40%
- Round 1 (4/9) = 44%
– 2014
- Round 4 (5/11) = 45%
- Round 1 (5/11) = 45%
- 2015
- Round 4 (5/10) = 50%
- Round 1 (6/10) = 60%
Jordy Smith surfed four times on finals day at Bells this year. There was no doubt that fatigue played a part in the end result. Jordy was obviously tired by the final because he’d had to surf through from round five that morning. Would things have been different if he’d gone straight through to the quarters after round four?
This is just one scenario but what do the numbers say about winning in the non-elimination rounds. Does it make you more or less likely to win the contest if you in fact surf less? This one shifts around a bit. Back in 2012 eight of the ten events were won by guys who also won their round four heat. Since then though victory in round four seems to have become less significant in terms of claiming the ultimate prize. Interestingly the 2015 results suggest that winning in round one made it more likely that you would go on to win the event.
The percentage of event winners who won both their first and fourth round heats :
– 2015 : 40% (4/10)
– 2014 : 37% (4/11)
– 2013 : 10% (1/10)
– 2012 : 33% (3/9)
Wilko won the Quiksilver Pro this year without losing a heat. However is that the norm? These stats suggest that while surfers do sometimes get on an invincible roll and win every heat through to the final, more often than not they go down in one of the no lose rounds. The surfer who ultimately hoists the trophy doesn’t always have a perfect contest. If you are a competitor this is reassuring if you’ve lost your round one or round four heat. As a fan it means that the no loser rounds are serving an important purpose because the guy who ultimately wins the event is often slipping up at least once. Would we see the same surfers hoisting trophies and winning world titles on a tour with no repechage heats?
