Carr attributed the decision to the debacle last week of prematurely crowning Kelly Slater the world champion. Slater was awarded the world title after winning his round-three heat of the Rip Curl Pro in San Francisco, despite having not having won enough points to do so. He was eventually crowned world champion after winning in round four.
“It is my duty to accept responsibility for the recent calculation error that resulted in the premature crowning of Kelly Slater’s 11th ASP World Title,” Brodie Carr said in an ASP statement. “The determination of the ASP World Title is the most important moment in professional surfing. Ultimately, the responsibility for every activity within ASP lies with me. Therefore, I have elected to resign my position as CEO.”
Repeated calls to Carr were not answered. Carr leaves the sport in a much different state to when he assumed the position in 2005. A complex single world-title ranking system, which replaced the previous two-tier pro and pro-am tours, was finally implemented this year. Most observers agree that the system has improved the likelihood of the best surfers competing at the highest level.
The new system was in response to a proposed rebel tour, led by Slater in 2009. This year also saw a return to urban beachbreaks, which has been popular with non-surfers and sponsors, but not with those of the sport’s traditional fans who prefer to watch contests held in world-class waves.
Carr also steered the sport through the difficult global financial crisis, during which backers for events were hard to find. Pro surfer Bede Durbidge told The Australian that it was inevitable someone took the blame for last week’s world-title blunder.
“I thought someone would be held accountable,” he said. “I’ve been talking to people and they’re saying how bad it was. I haven’t heard one good thing about it. It was so amateur.”Another Australian, Richard Grellman, who has been chairman of the ASP for the past 10 years, will act as executive chairman while the sport finds a successor.
Grellman, a keen surfer who lives across the road from the beach at Manly, was a director of AMP for 11 years, and chairman of the NSW Motor Accidents Authority from 1994 to 2009. He is also chairman of Bible Society Australia.
Board member Rod Brooks said the new CEO will be a person with senior sports administration experience. Asked if the new CEO should surf, as every previous ASP CEO has, Brooks said: “I think it depends on the person, really. I wouldn’t say it’s really come up before. We’ve never sat around and discussed whether the CEO surfed.”