Another epic collection of tube rides were pitted against one another for the October leg of the Monster Energy Pitstop powered by Zigzag in association with O’Neill and iON Action Cameras. From these, one ride in particular received almost 60% of the total votes to earn this month’s win and become the third finalist in line for the ‘Pit of the Year’ grand prize worth R30 000*.
In the end, Ricky Basnett’s local is lekker entry managed to pip the likes of Gideon Malherbe’s Bali bomb, a Desert Point dream by Adin Jeenes and a filthy Nigerian pit by John Micheletti.
Ricky spends some quality time in the green room at New Pier.
“Ricky weaved through this heavy barrel absolutely perfectly,” said judge Paul Canning from O’Neill about the winning ride. “He also displays excellent control on the foam ball of this throaty beast.”
Ricky’s insane barrel was filmed by Kate Lovemore, who wins an iON Air Pro Wifi Lite worth R2500, while Ricky scores a R5000 hamper from O’Neill.
“This was a pretty memorable morning at old New Pier,” claimed Ricky about the session. “I got out there at around 6:00am – because I’m a frother these days – and it was just purrrfect! It had cleaned up from the massive swell the day before and it was pretty much myself, Twiggy, Slade and a couple bodyboarders out. This wave had an amazing bend on it from in front of the pier and only just let me in before swallowing me whole. I almost got smashed by the foamball, but managed to get out and see a wide-eyed Twig screaming in the channel. Kiff times!”
Entries are now open for the fourth leg of the Monster Energy Pitstop, and you can submit your own epic tube rides to monsterpits.co.za
HOW THE VOTING WORKS:
• The public vote and judging panel’s vote is split 50-50
• This means each of the three judge’s votes count 16.67% of the overall vote (to make up the judges’ 50% of the vote).
• The public vote for each surfer is then worked out as a percentage of the total number of public votes across all contestants and divided by two to work out how much it contributes to the other 50%.
It sounds complicated, but makes sense when you do the sums. So let’s do the maths for the top two rides who were in the running this month:
Ricky Basnett
2x judge’s vote = 33.34%
Total public votes across all the contestants = 484
Ricky’s public votes: 239 votes = 49.38% of 484 / 2 = 24.69%
= 58.03% of votes overall
Gideon Malherbe
1x judge’s votes = 16.67%
Total public votes across all the contestants = 484
Gideon’s public votes: 9 votes = 1.86% of 484 / 2 = 0.93%
= 17.60% of votes overall
* Pit of the Year prize includes:
• R15 000 to the winning surfer
• R10 000 to the winning videographer
• An iON Air Pro 3 WiFi worth R5 000
Go to monsterpits.co.za for more info.
Great filming Kate! Trust me the video doesn’t do that barrel justice, it was some crazy shit!