It has become a ritual – one that, for all of its imperfection, is undeniably satisfying in its simplicity.
Every year, the Billabong XXL Awards take stock of the best rides from the world of big wave surfing and name a winner in several different categories. It's an awards show that is always hotly debated in surfing circles if for no other reason than the subjectivity of its results, despite the best intentions of organizers.
Last week, nominees for the Billabong XXL Awards were announced, a listing of surfers who had ridden specific waves deemed to be the biggest and most powerful on the planet in several categories: Ride of the Year, Biggest Wave of the Year, Biggest Paddle-In Wave of the Year and Tube of the Year.
And while five nominees have been listed in each category, now comes the most guiltily enjoyable and, critics say, inherently flawed, aspect of the $130,000 awards program – the process of speculating and figuring and opining to try to wrest a winner from the lot of nominees.
Because some of the categories – Ride of the Year, for example – are inherently subjective, the XXL organizers have enlisted the help of a legion of professionals – surfers and photographers, mainly – to vote on the winner.
“For the parts of the awards that are just kind of gut-level reaction, we've tried to bring in the opinions of the people who know best, and those are the surfers and photographers who are out there doing it every day,” said Bill Sharp, Billabong XXL director. “We've got 100 to 200 people voting on it now.”
Though the XXL Awards have been decried by some for their inherent imperfection in bestowing superlatives by naming the annual Biggest Wave of the Year winner, the awards are also widely held as the unofficial stamp of authority in big wave surfing. Still, critics claim that much of the results are obtained via “junk science,” with pundits and panelists trying to calculate how big a certain wave was, and filling in the gaps with opinion when needed.
“We try to be as honest and as technically sophisticated on the Big Wave awards as we can,” says Sharp. “Mainly that involves agreeing on where the top of the wave is and where the bottom of the wave is and measuring it from there.”
The awards are all the more contentious because big money is on the line. In years past the Biggest Wave winner was awarded a $1,000-per-foot prize purse, with a minimum of $60,000.
Last year, the rules changed, the Biggest Wave winner now being awarded $15,000 while the Ride of the Year – which has to be captured on video and takes in all aspects of how “heavy” a certain wave is – earns a $50,000 prize.
“The change came because we reached a bit of a plateau, where winners were in the wave heights of between 62 and 68 feet, ridden by guys who were between 35 and 40 years of age,” Sharp joked, adding that it was agreed that some of the most innovative surfing was being done on waves that were not necessarily the tallest.
Last year's Ride of the Year winner, for instance, Ken Collins of Santa Cruz, won for a giant, difficult-to-fathom tube ride at Puerto Escondido in Mexico.
This year's nominees for Ride of the Year vary in geography from the heavy-water reef at Teahupoo in Tahiti to Ghost Tree, a break adjacent to the Pebble Beach Golf Links, and a treacherous wave in Tasmania in Australia.
Whoever wins, there's sure to be a fair amount of debate, as always.
For more information, and for photos and video of this year's nominees, visit www.billabongxxl.com.
You can reach Brad Melekian by e-mailing him at sports@uniontrib.com
