A triumphant Kelly Slater stood in front of thousands of cheering fans on Wednesday, holding aloft his trophy and being sprayed with champagne. He had just been crowned world champion for a history-making 11th time - or so he thought.
In what will go down as one of sport's biggestblunders, Slater was prematurely awarded the world title due to an error in the rankings calculation. Had it not been for the surfer himself uncovering the mistake on Friday, no one might have known.
The Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) had calculated the 39-year-old's third round victory over Australia's Daniel Ross at the penultimate world tour event, the Rip Curl Search in San Francisco, was enough to clinch the title over Australian world No 2 Owen Wright. The following day Slater was reading online news of his victory when he came across a reader comment suggesting there had been a mistake.
"Can you read this comment from Mark? The calculator at @aspworldtour must be broken. I'm not the world champ yet!," Slater wrote on website Twitter on Friday.
The ASP looked into the matter and it turned out Mark was right. Twitter was abuzz with fans trying to get confirmation of the news so Slater made sure there was no confusion, tweeting: "I'm not joking. I have not won the world title yet. I still have to win another heat! @aspworldtour isn't gonna be happy with me or this but realised last night and confirmed just now with them. Only honest thing to do. We all make errors. Maybe I made one going public but on the bright side it will create bigger interest."
The ASP offered an explanation and an apology for the embarrassing error.
"Our rankings system is designed to split tie-breaks based off seed points," said Renato Hickel, ASP World Tour manager.
"Kelly and Owen tied at best nine of 11 results, so we went to best eight of 11 results and the system gave it to Kelly based off his higher seed position. We apologise to our fans, the surfers and to Owen and Kelly."
The contest at Ocean Beach was called off for a second successive day yesterday due to conditions but, when it resumes, Slater needs only to win one more heat at either the current event or the following one, Pipeline in Hawaii, to clinch the title. Wright must win both events.
