Jack Robinson with the dreaded interference penalty in Round 2. Photo: WSL//Screenshot
We have our first interference call of the 2026 Championship Tour, with Sammy Pupo moving onto Round 3 of the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach and Jack Robinson packing his bags early in the first contest of the season. Few things get surf fans flinging their pre-determined biases at one another more than the dreaded interference penalty.
The call came as the heat was hitting the nine-minute mark with Pupo holding priority and a sizable lead. Robinson needed to best his current high score at the time (5.67) with a 7.40 or better, and he’d likely need to flip priority in order to get that. Robinson either took off on a wave at about the 9:10 mark in the heat to possibly up his 5.67 and lower the score necessary to flip the heat, or he was outright trying to force Pupo to go on a wave so that he could change priority and go for the 7.40 in one swoop. Regardless of his strategy, he lost control of his board coming off the lip, grabbed it to make sure it wouldn’t hit Pupo, and was slapped with a priority interference when Pupo took off on the wave.
The WSL posted a replay of the incident and most fans didn’t love the call, blaming judges for falling for Pupo’s “flop,” making comparisons to soccer (we shouldn’t degrade surfing to that level, no matter how eager we are to shame judges), and making the first calls for overhauling the judging system altogether. You know, the usual – surf fans being sensible and not biased kinda stuff.
For what it’s worth, Kelly Slater jumped in the comments section and offered two points: one, he didn’t think it was an interference, and two, interference or not, Pupo was going to win the heat anyway.
“Didn’t matter either way. Sammy kinda smoked him anyhow so would have made no difference,” he said. “I think just the optics don’t look great to everyone.”
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