While John John was first in the operating room, then in physical therapy and then sailing for a month on a sailboat, Slater competed in all the CT events and not only failed to overtake John John but was relatively far behind in defining the second American place for the Tokyo 2020 qualification.

Slater will discard his second worst result of the year at Pipe, which is a 17, which means that he will start adding up from 28760, while John John will add up everything, starting from 33220, because having missed half the circuit he will not have any discards.

This difference of 4460 is very large and technically it is even greater, because in the case that John John does not heal his injury and only touches the water, ending in 33 will increase 265 more points up to 33485, taking 4725 from Slater.

With this, Slater's chances of overtaking John John are as follows:

-If John John places 33rd or 17th, Slater must at least place third at the Pipe Masters

-If John John places 9th, he will reach 36540 points, which will force Slater to place at least second in Pipe to overtake him.

-If John John places fifth, he will reach 37965 points, which will force Slater to win the Pipe Masters

-If John John places third he will reach 39305 points, leaving Slater with no chance of catching him and guaranteeing himself a place in Tokyo 2020.

The other player with a mathematical chance of catching John John is Hawaiian Seth Moniz, 12th in the CT ranking with 27535 points, who, considering the discard, starts adding points from 26205. This makes the scenario for the youngster the following:

-If John John places 33rd, Seth Moniz must place second at the Pipe Masters (and pray that Slater doesn't make the semis).

-If John John places 17th, he has 34550 points and in that case Moniz should win the Pipe Masters (and pray that Slater doesn't place second).

-If John John is placed ninth, it leaves Moniz with no chance.

Basically, a really bad Pipe Master by John John still means that Slater has to get on the podium, which leaves John John with one foot in Tokyo 2020.