Brazilian surfer Tomas Hermes criticised the judges' work during the live broadcast of the Quik Pro France a few minutes ago, after losing his heat to Hawaiian Ezekiel Lau.

Hermes had lost in the worst possible way, with three seconds on the clock, Lau found a shot, he needed 7,8 and the judges gave him 7,9.

Minutes later he appeared on the live stream: “In the heat I think he got overscored, for sure. I met with a lot of surfers here, I asked them all what was going to happen and they all said… All the surfers in the competition area, we don’t know what the judges want,” he said. “We saw a lot of barrels in the event today, Kikas got a 7,5, Jeremy got a 5. He got overscored for sure, I think. We try to understand the judges but nobody understands what’s going on here.”

Asked if he was going to talk to the head judge and try to understand them better, Hermes said: “We try, we try, we get a message before the event starts every day, but honestly I can’t look at those messages anymore, every event is different, the scores are different, we can’t control it. We try to improve the level of surfing, but we don’t understand what’s going on here. It’s like: ‘Oh, did I really lose?’, and everyone in the competition area, all the coaches are saying: ‘Oh, really, you lost, it can’t be!’” Hermes concluded.

The Brazilian was in dire need of passing that series, he is ranked 23rd in the CT ranking, one place behind the qualification zone. Meanwhile, in the QS he is barely in the top 100 in position 86.