Well, another week has gone by and another three WQS men’s events along with one women’s WQS.
As predicted for the men, not much of a change in the ratings up top. Nic Muscroft has made a slight jump from 25th to 22nd and Eneko Acero from 47th to 40th.
The Movistar Surf Classic in Spain saw winner Marlo Likpe only able to move up from 99th to 82nd , while the Gatordade Classic Brazil saw victor Eric de Souza make a dramatic jump from 518th to 238th.
Meanwhile in Japan at the 2 Star Sahara Pro, the winner Teppei Tajima actually dropped from 103rd to 107th due to a lot of surfers in the 4 Star events lower down overtaking him. Life can be cruel.
In the women’s ratings, who count the best five results this year, the cutoff point is at Laurina McGrath on 5470, which was the exact amount last year needed to make the Top 6 WQS to advance to the ASP Women’s World Tour. Although Laurina is currently 13th at present, there are seven girls above her in the World Tour Top 10 who would not need their WQS rating for 2008. Of these seven, at least five are a certainty.
With only one event for the girls remaining, a 6 Star at Haleiwa, the cutoff is looking like 6000, leaving about 25 girls still in with a chance.
Congratulations go to WQS No. 1 Jacqueline Silva on attaining 8965 points - this cannot be overtaken this year. Most likely, newcomers will be Karina Petroni and Nicola Atherton as well as a return to the World Tour for Serena Brook and maybe Laurina McGrath - not set in stone yet though.
This may sound confusing so here is a short run down of how the system works.
The Men’s WQS is based on the best 7 results from all 1-6 Star events. The Top 15 rated at the end of the WQS season move on to the ASP World Tour the following season. If any of the Top 15 end up dual qualifying in the Top 27 on the ASP World Tour, then they don’t need their WQS rating so WQS number 16 moves up, then 17, etc. until we end up with 15 surfers not in the Top 27 of the ASP World Tour.
For the women it’s a little different as they don’t have the luxury of so many big WQS events.
In their case we see how many 5-6 star events they have in the year and this decides how many events end up counting. If it’s less than five events, then all count; six to seven, then best five count; eight to nine, then best six; and 10 or over, best seven.
For this year, we have seven major events so the best five will count.The number advancing on to the ASP Women’s World Tour in 2008 is six along with the Top 10 from this season’s World Tour.
The same deal applies for the women for double-ups in the Top 10 ASP Women’s World Tour who are in the Top 6 WQS.
That’s it until next week.
For more on the Foster's World Tour and the ASP World Qualifying Series, visit ASPWorldTour.com