The ASP and Volcom announced this week that the Fiji Pro will return to the World Tour schedule next June, after a three-year hiatus.
“The Volcom Fiji Pro is the result of a long-term discussion and partnership between ASP and Volcom,” says ASP International Media Director Dave Prodan. “Events of this magnitude can take months, sometimes years, of work before they become a reality.”
Willie Marshall, Volcom’s Director of PR, says that the outpouring of grievances over the Tour’s current state actually had no bearing on this 2012 addition. Volcom has been talking with Brodie Carr and the ASP for many years about the possibility of a World Tour event, and in all of those years, Tavarua has always been their top-choice venue. “It really just came down to perfect timing,” he says.
Evidently, they ASP been working with Volcom for a long time to return the tour to Fiji’s flawless seas and, in turn, keep the dream alive.
And seriously, have you seen the shiatsu coming out of Fiji over the past few months? In essence, ever since the country (and namely, Tavarua) opened its breaks to the public last year, they’ve been going off. Kelly skipped J-Bay and scored, according to Twitter, some of the best waves of his life. “I saw a once in a lifetime swell and came to surf it. No apologies,” he wrote.
“The event is absolutely an enhancement to our current schedule and aids us in providing a diverse, comprehensive tour for the world’s best surfers,” Prodan says.
Volcom Vice President of Surf Marketing Brad Dougherty says, “We love the concept of The Dream Tour, so it just made so much sense to host an event in world-class waves. We have been going to Fiji for nearly 20 years and are continually reminded of how amazing a place it truly is. It will be incredible to see the world’s best surfers competing to be the Volcom Fiji Pro champ… we can’t wait!”
See? The Dream Tour may have taken up some obscure form of martial arts (it needed to mix things up) but it is alive and well. Here’s to hoping that even the polarizing city stops prove dreamy.
