There was a fair amount of sport to watch this past weekend, but I was particularly looking forward to watching the closing rounds of the Billabong Pro surfing event that was on at J-Bay in the Eastern Cape. Jordy Smith had been surfing well and it looked like he could make the final. He did, and he won, again.

This year’s event had been marred by very average wave conditions at South Africa’s most famous wave, Jeffrey’s Bay. The final day of competition was to be no different.

Howling onshore winds paired with lashing bursts of rain made conditions extremely tough for the surfers on Sunday morning.

After a huge start to the event, Jordy ended up breaking a board midway through the event and this threatened to disrupt his rhythm.

It didn’t though, and the 23-year-old Durbanite powered through the rest of the event to claim his back-to-back Billabong Pro Jeffrey’s Bay title after beating Mick Fanning in the final.

With it, $75 000 and the Nixon WTA award for a custom built Nixon watch valued at $10 000 for scoring the highest heat total at the event – a total of 18.30 out of 20 in his Round five win over Bede Durbidge.

Both surfers opened up their final with almost matching scores, but Mick struggled in the closing half of the heat, theBOMBsurf sums it up:

Fanning, a former two-time World and J-Bay champion, led the final with an excellent 8.0 point ride early on and was briefly out in front again at the halfway point, but could not produce the 7.61 point ride he needed to overtake Smith once the South African had snatched the lead back with an innovative ‘double-grab’ aerial with 12 minutes remaining.

Jordy also earned himself 10 000 valuable world title points and the victory pushed him from fifth to second in this year’s world title race.

He was pretty stoked with how things worked out:

It’s been an incredible week for me. All the support of the people at Jeffrey’s Bay, Garth (Tarlow), Steve (Smith), my girlfriend Lyndall (Jarvis), my mom and dad and everyone else.

It’s been a really special week for me and I’m so happy right now.

Jordy, we’re also pretty stoked for you so don’t forget to pop past the 2oceansVibe Media compound for some high-fiving when you get home.

[Source: theBOMBsurf]