Maybe it’s a recalibration now that Pipe means nothing for the 2016 title chase. Maybe I’ve been sadistically revelling in the cruel twists and turns of the qualification dance, with failure threatening tour surfers like the shears of Atropos. Maybe it’s just been the appeal of quality of surfing in good waves. Whatever the cause, I’ve been digging the 2016 Triple Crown events this Hawaiian winter and, despite John John threatening to wear surf-journalist narratives perilously thin with his constant winning, Pipe has arrived on the back of some good, old-fashioned tour froth from this side of the screen.

We’ve also been riding hard on the coat-tails of Beach-Grit’s Derek Rielly, cashing in on the fact that he’s discovered the joy of moneyballing fantasy sports. We may have consequently been spending our days snorting drugs of the still-firm bodies of their discarded bikini-shoot starlets and shouting Chapter 11 quotes at Leonardo Fioravanti. There’s also a chance that we merely had a couple of articles published, got eclipsed by Albee’s 540, called out by the BeachGrit commenters and then promptly forgotten. We can’t recall which. We do remember giving an abbreviated top/bottom 5 surfers for Pipe based on our projections, which you can see here.

Conditions

This is Pipe/Backdoor; I feel pretty stupid describing the most famous of all tour waves, and yet here I am. Pipe offers a heaving left and right reef break option (depending on the swell direction and sand), which can handle anything from 2’ to triple-overhead. Surfers can make or break reputations/world titles/and even livelihoods based on their success at the wave. Our sortable conditions/projections/event history data has been up for a while now, but if you missed it you can reacquaint yourself here. We’ve tried to cover all possible options with our numbers, but you may wish to focus on specific areas once a reliable forecast comes into play.

The official forecast for the Pipe event is not yet up, but ‘unofficial’ sources point to possible head-high NW swell with mostly favourable winds on the opening day, followed by smaller conditions later in the week. There isn’t anything huge swell-wise in the forecasts we’ve seen, but there is the possibility of some decent conditions from Tuesday 13/12. We strongly suggest that you keep yourself on top of the forecast conditions as the waiting period draws near; it could have a major impact on the best team options.

Based on the break features and the surfers’ past results at this event, here are our nominations for strong ‘conditions’ surfers for this event:

Kelly Slater

Nobody on tour today can lay claim to coming close to Kelly’s success at this event. He dominates many AHS stats synonymous with Pipe, including reefs, left-handers, and conditions form 6-10’ and above. Kelly has also won the event more than anyone, AND he’s surfed extremely well at both Fiji and Tahiti this year.

John John Florence

John tops nearly every conditions category that Kelly doesn’t, including right-handers, 6-8’ waves, and left-right break combos. He also surfed very well at Fiji and Chopes. The only major stat that he lacks at Pipe compared to Kelly is his number of wins (unless you include the Volcom QS event, which we don’t).

Gabriel Medina

If it’s a bit smaller at this event this year, Gabs could be your man. He’s no slouch in the bigger stuff though, plus he’s made the past two finals at the event. Easy pick.

Joel Parkinson

Joel is a past winner here and he boasts the best average results at this event of all surfers over the past five years (check the table at the bottom of this page). On top of that, he sits in the top 5 in the 2016 season AHS, overall AHS, right-handers (second best), four-to-six foot waves (second best) and eight-to-ten foot conditions.

Conditions Warnings

Matt Wilkinson

In the past 5 years, Wilko has finished better than 25th at this event only once. He has a woeful AHS for this event over the past two contests and a very low average in reef-breaks from the past 3 years. Wilko has over-performed for most of the year, but he’s a top-tier risk for Pipe.

Bede Durbidge

Honestly, there are few people who are more stoked to see a firing Bede back in the water than us. It warms our cold, lifeless hearts. But we’re sure you don’t read our gormless scribblings for ‘heart’; you want stats. Bede won this event in 2007, but within our 20014-16 data range he looks like a weak option. Throw in a lack of time in the water and we can’t help but say ‘avoid’.

Alex Ribeiro

For the most part we avoid writing about Alex; he’s an easy target, we don’t like kicking people when they’re down and we don’t expect many of you to consider him anyway. We do worry that some readers may actually take our warnings seriously, and so we thought it only responsible to mention the elephant in the room: that Alex Ribeiro is a statistical impossibility when it comes to Pipe success. If you do select him and he does well, he will provide an amazing point-of-difference from other teams, allow you to make ground in your clubhouse and taste the sweet nectar of success. It still won’t be worth it; you’ll still never regard your own reflection in quite the same way.

Form

Obviously Sunset and Haleiwa don’t provide the same conditions as those found at Pipe, but the two QS events have thrown up some helpful yard-sticks by which surfers’ Hawaiian form can be measured. Here’s how we see the options based purely on current mojo:

John John John Florence

Portugal? Check. World title? Check. Haleiwa? Damn right. Triple Crown? Pretty close. Unless boredom is a major, unseen factor, we’d say that double-John has form coming out of his curly-blonde ass.

Jordy Smith

At Sunset today, Jordy won his first ever event in Hawaii. He’s ranked 3^rd in the Triple Crown race, only 200 points behind the Little Prince. Jordy has looked particularly good this year, and if we were ever to select him at Pipe, this is as good as time as any. Given his form in barrelling lefts though, we’d wait to see what part Backdoor has to play in the contest forecast.

Frederico Morais

Freddy has been a revelation these past few months; he’s been looking so good whenever he’s thrown on a jersey, and he’s balls-deep in the mix for the Triple Crown title. Can he make it through the hyper-competitive Pipe trials though?

Update – Frederico has been given an injury wildcard spot (replacing Alejo Muniz), meaning that he will no-longer have to surf in the trials

Jadson Andre

How feel-good has Jadson’s Cinderella story been these past few weeks? The general consensus seems to be that people are happy for his success, think he’s a nice guy and passionately believe his position could be better filled by surfers with more talent. We feel the same way about his selection on your Pipe team.

Form Warnings

Italo/Caio/Conner/Kanoa

These four were bundled out of both Triple Crown events without so much as a single heat win. They still pocketed a minimum $1300US for each event though because of their R3 seeding. At least they’ll get an even juicier $9000 consolation if they bomb out of Pipe.

Ryan Callinan

For every Cinderella, there’s an ugly sister or two. Ryan Callinan was well within the QS bubble leading into the Hawaiian season, but he’s had a tough run and we all bore witness to the horror show that was Rhino’s sharp descent. Callinan is a quality surfer who suffered some narrow losses in high-scoring heats this year, but you can’t deny that he’s been lacking that positive mojo that only comes with a run of form. Maybe the freedom of having nothing to lose will prove inspirational at Pipe?

Adam Melling / Kai Otton

These two Aussie old-schoolers have been struggling this year. While an unlikely win at Pipe could prove enough to get them back into qualification, we’re not calling it.

Heat Draw

While much less important when compared to conditions and form, the draw should still be a partial consideration. Having 3 surfers in a R1 heat, or even 2 surfers facing off in R2, is bad form. If you want to play around with heat win and R2 possibilities, we recommend wslbracket.com as a fun way of predicting possible result match-ups. Be aware though that a single change from your projections can alter the following round entirely.

Our R1 “heat of death” nomination for this contest is H1 Wilson/Dantas/Flores

Update – Alejo and Banting have withdrawn from the event, with Morais and Bruce Irons respectively replacing them. They cannot be added to the draw until the trials have been won so as to ensure the correct seeding.

Sleeper Picks

We like to offer a few suggestions that may not be on everyone’s radar. Any success that involves deviating from the popular vote will provide a huge advantage for players willing to take the risk. Since the % owned feature from the WSL and FS games are invisible until lock-out, we are simply predicting who we think will be low in the popularity stakes.

Top

John John and Medina will rightly dominate selections here, but Joel, Julian and ADS are past winners as well. Kolohe probably offers the only plausible option as a true, against-the-crowd dark-horse.

Mid

If you’re feeling brave, you may want to throw Jadson Andre one of your coveted selections. He’s definitely an outsider, but he’s pushed hard in the triple crown and won when he’s needed to.

Low

Wildcards tend to be added to the draw late, meaning fewer people think/have time to add them. We like the looks of Frederico as a sneaky point-of-difference if he makes it into the draw. If not, there will no-doubt be other trialists who will be happy to set a cat amongst the Pipe pigeons.

 With Frederico now added and available, an in-form, last-minute trialist will probably offer a more contrary option to other teams.

Teams

Here are our “numbers” teams: a selection overview based purely on our projections. If you really want to see/beat our non-numbers team, join the clubhouse (it’s not that hard – in both cases).

WSL numbers team

Rhino and Caio are interesting picks, but they didn’t have many weaknesses across all areas so the projections liked them. Let’s hope the numbers are right.

Fantasy Surfer numbers team

Some very solid options in place here. Rhino and Caio get another shot.

The Outliers

For each event in 2016, we will produce a list of ‘outliers’ that represent some kind of anomaly within our selection analyses. Maybe there are factors that a spreadsheet can’t detect, maybe all of the numbers point a god-awful result at this event, or maybe their recent form simply contradicts their previous averages.

Here are our outliers for Pipe:

Conner Coffin

We didn’t tell Conner this when asking for an interview, but we here at Surf-Stats consider ourselves the kiss of death when it comes to interviews. The former FS leaderboard contender ‘Badger’ knows it, Hira Teriinatoofa knows it, and – dammit, we hope we’re wrong – soon Conner could know it too.

Bede Durbidge

If snapping your pelvis at this very break 12 months ago doesn’t fuck with your mind, then you’re a better man than me. Actually, the chances are that Bede’s a better man than me regardless.

Adam Melling / Kai Otton

Sure, we may have only just finished telling you that the form of these two is worthy of a warning, but never underestimate the appeal of a swan song. Will one of these two rise to the challenge of protecting their legacy? They would only need to make the quarters to justify their selection.

Kelly Slater

Sure, we’ve already talked him up, but if you’re still not convinced then consider this: Kelly hasn’t done a full Hawaiian season and Triple Crown for years, and now – post JJF title – he’s found his motivation again. Coincidence? Kelly wants to beat John at Pipe. He wants it so bad.

Surf-stats Clubhouses

Now that you know the team break-downs, it’s time for you to create a team that will hold our selections to account. Sign up to our WSL Surf-Stats group (password – SS) or the Fantasy Surfer Surf-Stats clubhouse (password – SS) and challenge yourself against us and our readers. We will give a shout-out to each winner and analyse their team.

As always, feel free to comment or leave your own team selections below.

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