Owen Wright Triumphs Over Slater; Parko On A Roll by Sean Doherty, Surfermag.com

Bells Beach is six foot, offshore, sunny, warm… and the Earth has surely shifted a few degrees off its axis.

“It’s pumping, proper,” offered Joel Parkinson as he jogged down the hill at Bells for his Rip Curl Pro heat this morning. For all the venom it cops, Bells shone today, the best day for a contest here in a decade.

As soon as Rip Curl committed to the new format, pruning a round off their event and consigning 16 surfers to a sudden and bloody demise on day one, you could have almost guaranteed this eventuality would present itself. Here is an event generally starved of waves suddenly with more waves than it knows what to do with.

It doesn’t rain, it pours.

“When the contest started on day one this swell was only 50/50,” surmised event forecaster Ben Matson. “And now we’ve got two of them.” So good is the forecast for the remaining days that they even called off the contest yesterday – the best day at Bells in six months, and surely the best layday in Bells’ history.

The surfing today, fittingly, lifted, and it was most evident in the top-heavy top half of the draw. The magic in the early heats came from the likes of Taylor Knox, Parko and Mick Fanning in particular. Parko looked the pick, surfing weightless yet brutal.

“I’m just glad he didn’t get another high nine,” laughed Joel’s travelling mentor, Luke Egan after the heat. “What can ya tell a guy who just got two 9.8s? You should have got two 10s?” Managing talent of that calibre can be the easiest and hardest job in the world, and in the case of a guy like Joel, seemingly, it’s more about managing momentum than anything else.

Joel’s win became even more significant after Kelly’s loss. The top half of the draw became somewhat less stacked when the world champion was bundled out by Aussie wildcard, Owen Wright. Kelly Slater’s love/hate relationship continued today, with little love out there for the defending Bells champion. Surfing a board substantially longer than his well-trumpeted 5’4”, a board with a nose even, Kelly surfed well, even managing to conjure a barrel from the barrel-less expanse of the Bells Bowl. But at no stage could you clearly say either he or Wright owned the heat.

“I just didn’t want to look him in the eyes out there,” said the stringbean Aussie after walking back up the stairs. “The boys had warned me about it.” Owen, a long heralded prodigy here in Australia, threw a couple of turns big enough to get some traction with the judges and consign Kelly to his second 17th, and second wildcard loss in a row. Where that leaves his 10th world title was anyone’s guess, but the sound of champagne corks popping were notable by their absence. With Tahiti next he’s still in the mix.

The contest was shuffled over the headland after lunch to Winkipop as the tide filled in and the wind swung sideshore. The only established star still floating around in the bottom half of the draw is Taj Burrow, and he’ll be first heat in the water when the contest resumes in days ahead. With the wind expected to stay sideshore south-west tomorrow before swinging back to the ideal nor-west on Thursday, it looks like a day off is the likely outcome.

See you Thursday.

RIP CURL PRO BELLS BEACH ROUND 2 RESULTS: Heat 1: C.J. Hobgood (USA) 16.00 def. Mick Campbell (AUS) 11.00 Heat 2: Taylor Knox (USA) 16.93 def. Chris Ward (USA) 10.67 Heat 3: Kai Otton (AUS) 12.67 def. Dayyan Neve (AUS) 12.50 Heat 4: Joel Parkinson (AUS) 16.76 def. Michel Bourez (PYF) 11.66 Heat 5: Mick Fanning (AUS) 17.16 def. Tiago Pires (PRT) 15.27 Heat 6: Bobby Martinez (USA) 16.40 def. Tim Boal (FRA) 12.50 Heat 7: Jordy Smith (ZAF) 13.00 def. Damien Hobgood (USA) 12.17 Heat 8: Owen Wright (AUS) 14.67 def. Kelly Slater (USA) 13.83 Heat 9: Adam Robertson (AUS) 16.10 def. Bede Durbidge (AUS) 15.84 Heat 10: Tom Whitaker (AUS) 12.57 def. Jihad Khodr (BRA) 9.67 Heat 11: Drew Courtney (AUS) 16.07 def. Adriano de Souza (BRA) 15.60 Heat 12: Kekoa Bacalso (HAW) 15.60 def. Jeremy Flores (FRA) 13.47

REMAINING RIP CURL PRO BELLS BEACH ROUND 2 HEATS: Heat 13: Taj Burrow (AUS) vs. Jay Thompson (AUS) Heat 14: Tim Reyes (USA) vs. Kieren Perrow (AUS) Heat 15: Adrian Buchan (AUS) vs. Dean Morrison (AUS) Heat 16: Fredrick Patacchia (HAW) vs. David Weare (ZAF)

RIP CURL PRO BELLS BEACH ROUND 3 MATCH-UPS: Heat 1: C.J. Hobgood (USA) vs. Taylor Knox (USA) Heat 2: Kai Otton (AUS) vs. Joel Parkinson (AUS) Heat 3: Mick Fanning (AUS) vs. Bobby Martinez (USA) Heat 4: Jordy Smith (ZAF) vs. Owen Wright (AUS) Heat 5: Adam Robertson (AUS) vs. Tom Whitaker (AUS) Heat 6: Drew Courtney (AUS) vs. Kekoa Bacalso (HAW) Heat 7: TBA Heat 8: TBA