Gabriel Medina. Photo: WSL // YouTube
A Championship Tour season isn’t really a Championship Tour season until fans and athletes have judging drama to gripe about. And boy, did Bells deliver. Finals Day saw a head-scratcher when Rio Waida busted out a great ride at a critical moment against Griffin Colapinto, earning the praise and astonishment from every WSL employee with a microphone…and a ho-hum 7.60 from every WSL employee with a score card.
In the grand scheme of things, the difference between that 7.60 and the excellent score the broadcast team (and most fans) expected didn’t flip the heat. It didn’t cost Waida a trip to his first Final. He would have needed a massive score in order to take the heat from Colapinto in that moment. But it did come just days after Gabriel Medina put debating judging decisions back on our annual to do list as fans. And because of that, Waida’s wave, inconsequential as it may seem, felt like salt rubbed into an open wound. I’d argue the only reason anybody really cared about Waida’s wave is because Gabriel Medina just brought the topic to the forefront.
“This is the worst judging I have ever seen. It’s bad for the sport. I’ve been through a lot of judging things, but maybe this is the worst one,” he said after his Round of 32 exit. “It’s something that we gotta talk about. We pretend that it’s not happening. It’s happening. It’s bad for the sport. I just hope they can improve and get better. Hopefully they listen more to us, but it is what it is.”
We walked down a familiar path last May when Medina was on the same end of a debatable outcome at the Surf Ranch Pro. At the time, Medina voiced his opinion on the WSL’s “lack of clarity and inconsistency in the definition of grades” and went on to described the League’s response to his questions behind closed doors as “quite defensive, with bad examples to illustrate their points.”
Meanwhile, irrational fans took it upon themselves to fire death threats at Ethan Ewing and then the WSL decided to speak up, pointing the finger back at Medina once they’d finished the obvious and easy duty of scolding unhinged fans.
The league’s letter to the WSL community seemed to blame the entire ordeal on the Brazilian for speaking out publicly instead of going through a private review process — the kind of review process you imagine results in a letter from the league saying, “we watched the tape and you still lost the heat.” I’m probably not the only one who read that public letter and thought Medina was onto something when he called the WSL out for being defensive. In the end, the points that 2023 Surf Ranch debacle may have cost Medina were enough to hand Jack Robinson the fifth spot on WSL Finals Day.
Now, is this the worst judging we’ve ever seen? Probably not. Or maybe. This is the age of social media. Everything is the worst ever or greatest ever, depending on whose feed you’re looking at.
Is it bad for the sport? That depends on whose shoes you’re wearing. From a WSL perspective, at the very least, judging drama gets people talking about, and engaged in, events. Even if that engagement is a lot of negativity spewed at them.
Do Brazilians face some kind of discrimination from WSL judges? I doubt it. Seven of the last nine men’s world titles were won by Brazilians, so that’s a tough argument to stand on.
Are there CT athletes whose high rankings feel like they’re regularly propped up by sitting on the good side of those debatable calls? Yes. It definitely feels that way. Often.
The WSL should consider handling things different this time around though. Rather than ignoring it all, maybe handing out a fine to dissenting athletes, and only speaking up if fans cross a line that shouldn’t be crossed, why not create a better-educated fan base? Debating officiating in sports will never go away. And truthfully, most of us don’t know what the hell the real difference is between a 7 and an 8 anyway. I don’t. I do what most surf fans do and take my cues from the scores judges have been handing out that day. Now, if the process of making those judging calls was integrated into broadcasts, we’d all learn at least a little bit of how the sausage is made and the WSL would be in front of the inevitable debates over their judging criteria.
Currently, the bulk of judging insight on WSL broadcasts comes from generic, pre-produced packages giving a Judging 101 type breakdown ahead of an event. In-the-moment analysis comes from broadcasters who are mostly former competitors themselves. They all hem and haw until scores drop and are left in the dark like the rest of us when that score surprises us…like wondering what in the world Rio Waida needed to do for an excellent score, or why Gabe Medina seems to be on the outside looking in a bit more than your average CT vet? There just isn’t enough transparency in the judging process (or the WSL’s response to it being called into question) to go beyond the speed, power, and flow of it all.
Why can’t Kaipo break away during a lull to check in with the head judge and ask for clarity on a score? Why can’t that head judge give us a detailed analysis of the critical differences between two turns from two different surfers? Why can’t the WSL take a page out of the NFL’s book, for example, and designate actual officials as in-broadcast correspondents? Why can’t Richie Porta be on regular live broadcasts instead of those pre-taped packages?
These things won’t wipe away every surf fan’s dissenting opinion or calm every athlete on the wrong end of a close call. But they will put the league in front of inevitable judging debates rather than behind them — a spot where they’re forced to dig their heels in and respond with “because we said so.” Because as we all know now, that doesn’t seem to work.
