King of the Groms: The Round One Winners

Well, Round One of King of the Groms 2015 is a wrap. And, we have our winners. Judges Craig Anderson (#KingOfTheAir), Dane Reynolds (#KingOfTheRail) and Jeremy Flores (#KingOfTheCombo) have made their selections, and below are the 30 groms who’ll progress to Round Two. The three groms who were the best in their categories each score $1k each:

– Harley Ross for #KingOfTheAir
– Leonardo Fioravanti for #KingOfTheRail
– Weslley Dantas for #KingOfTheCombo

Below is the full list of winners. They’ll now progress to the second round, where they must enter a one to two-minute hype clip of themselves with the sound jacked up to 11, with music and graphics provided by Quiksilver. This will live on Quiksilver’s KOTG website for public voting. Just remember: More hype = more votes. The top 7 will be chosen by public vote. Dane, Craig and Jeremy will each pick one clip, too. The Top 10 will move to the KOTG Secret Final. And that’s where things really get interesting… but more on that soon. For now, here’s the second-rounders:

#KingOfTheAir

Craig Anderson: “To me what makes a good air is having good flow. And, good style. But a big part is also uniqueness. The technical side of an air is about how fast you spin, how big the section is, the grab. It’s timing, flow, with nothing out of place. A hard air that’s made to look easy. I see so many kids hitting sections and doing frontside grab air reverses on tap, but it’s just about having a different approach. I want to see anything that’s a bit surprising. It’d just be cool to see young kids going for it. Not necessarily huge sections, but seeing a kid throw themselves into a three foot section with good air wind and really going for it would be sick.”

Winner: Harley Ross
Shane Borland // Kian Martin
Jordy Collins // Kael Walsh
Vitor Mendes // Malakai Martinez
Nolan Rapoza // Samuel Pupo
Sebastian Williams

****

#KingOfTheRail

Dane Reynolds: “The rails are arguably the most important curve of a surfboard. Leaning on your rail and applying pressure to have them cut through water and propel yourself forward is one of the most basic fundamentals in surfing, but being able to hold the rail in the water through steep parts of the wave with a lot of speed is one of the most difficult things to master. I’ll be looking for control, technique, speed, and overall usage of the rails to get where you wanna go and do what you wanna do on a wave.”

Winner: Leonardo Fioravanti
Riley Laing // Gabriel Bruno
Tane Bowden // Kehu Butler
Yuri Mori // Jonas Tawharu
Morgan Cibilic // Sandon Whittaker
Micky Clarke

****

#KingOfTheCombo

Jeremy Flores: “I think to win the #kingofthecombo, you’ll need some variation of strong, different manoeuvres on the same wave: The best would be to have one good carving manoeuvre, followed by an air. I think you want, not necessarily a good wave, but just two crazy manoeuvres on the same wave. I think two is enough for a good combo. I think linking really big, combination manoeuvres is the key for success. You see nowadays, the best surfers in the world like John John Florence, Gabriel Medina, Filipe Toledo and those guys, they have really good combos. It’s our goal, all surfers on tour, to have good combinations.”

Winner: Weslley Dantas
Kyuss King // Marco Mignot
Luis Diaz // Mateus Herdy
Kei Kobayashi // Zac Wightman
Finn McGill // Noah Beschen
Cole Houshmand