Brazilian Miguel Pupo wins 2011 Nike 6.0 Lowers Pro

The buzzer had gone off signaling the end of the Nike 6.0 Lowers Pro final, but everyone on the beach was holding their breath to hear the last wave score for Miguel Pupo and Tanner Guduaskas to see who won. It was hard to gauge who had a larger fan club on the beach Tanner or Miguel. However after the judges locked in their scores, cheers erupted from the VIP and athlete area indicating Miguel had won. Surfing against local Tanner Gudauskas at his home break, Miguel Pupo managed to take the lead by .06 in the final minutes to win the Nike 6.0 Lowers Pro.

The Lowers Pro started with 24 CT surfers entering the competition, but unfortunately unlike last year, a pumping swell wasn’t on tap. Kelly Slater was suppose to compete in the contest, but was a no show and Fox Head surfer Eric Geiselman filled Kelly’s spot. Anyone else think that Kelly pulled out of the contest because of small waves? C’mon I know you’re thinking it too.

It was definitely a more mellow compared to last year’s 6.0 Lowers Pro and it wasn’t Nike or Oakely doing. If anything, those two sponsors stepped up and made the event site better. However the same can’t be said for the webcast. I was down at Lowers each day last year, but this year there wasn’t a live stream available of ASPtogo app in the beginning. I then tried watching the webcast online Thursday and met black screens and frozen images. Throughout the contest, I can’t even begin to tell you how many tweets I read complaining about the webcast. Not really sure why because I saw a big satellite dish. Maybe there was wind interference?

Nike created a golden spike trophy estimated worth of $30k plus put up a $40k 1st place check. Needless to say Miguel was pretty stoked and in Olympic fashion bite down on the spike to make sure it was real. It was a great day for Brazilian surfing. The CT now heads down to Brazil for the Billabong Rio Pro.

Men’s Final Heat Results:
Tanner Guduaskas 13.57
Miguel Pupo 13.63