THE ASP Power Ranking scandal

Nothing like a bit of skinner & skandaal to start the season. Anyone remember Lewis Samuels Power Rankings that used to air on Surfline back in 2007? If you were a pro surfer on tour and you had a weakness Lewis let the world know what is was - in glowing neon lights. Turned out that pro-surfers weren't exactly the tough-skinned variety and more than one ran off crying to their sponsors, who cos they wielded some media clout back in the day over magazines & the surf industry in general, tended to get their way. And Surfline dropped Lewis's Power Rankings like a hot potato.

He then went on to create the terribly witty, yet un-erringly controversial, PostSurf. But finally the pressure of the industry musta got to him cos after 9 hilarious months PostSurf was plucked from our world in 2010. Back to "stay between the lines" surf journalism yet again. Yawn.

Then the new-look ASP thought maybe they should spice things up for 2014. Turns out they still can't manage anything with a bit of heat though. After asking Lewis to resurrect his Power Rankings of the 2014 surfers for their new-look website, they then proceeded to yank them off the site just 3 days later. No doubt lil surfers running off to cry to mommy again. And despite the big brands not having the clout they once did, it seems they still have enough to get the ASP to do their bidding if required.

Part 1 of the Power Ranking aired on Valentines Day. The next day, it had vanished. As had all the facebook & twitter posts that had in anyway been related to it. Blink and you miss it. I did. Now all you get if you're trying to link back to it on the ASP site is a "Page not Found" message.

Luckily for us a blogger called Daynolds copied it and kindly posted the reviews of the 2014 ASP surfers ranked from 18-34, so that the rest of us can still see what the ASP did a 180 degree turn on. Such a pity we didn't get to see Part 1. Who knows, maybe Lewis will leak it out one day....

(just click each pic to see the larger version if you have kak eye-sight)