He's the current World # 13, was last year's rookie of the year, has his own prime time television show in France, and now Jeremy Flores has claimed the inaugural people's choice award for Best Surfer in Europe.

The celebratory and boozy fixture - thrown by Surf Europe magazine at Hossegor's awesomely named Sporting Casino - was a who's who of continental surfing, with winner Jeremy extolling the Euroforce movement from the microphone: "It's a great night ... for all of us."

When the surfers launched worldprosurfers.com two years ago, it was decided that the majority of pictures on podiums should get dumped quicker than a chubby lover with a yeast infection.

Welcome to the slim percentage that slips through the net, and there's a reason for this, context, where the small piece of information tells a much greater story. Because let's face it, the likes of Jeremy, Aritz (pictured), Miky and Tiago are leading a very important era in European surfing, and this week's gong show was a notable crystallisation.

Europe is popping its cork with talent at the moment, yet it's not just the grommets from the traditional surfing hornet nests like Ericeira, Zarautz, Newquay and Hossegor making all the ruckus. The next wave of Euro talent looks to be coming from the former colonies.

You have folk like Michel Bourez and Tamaroa McComb coming from Tahiti, kids like Abdel Al Hamid and Yassine Ramdani from Morocco, and - good Lord - four of the top eight European juniors are from Reunion Island! Not to mention kids from the Canaries, Guadeloupe, Mauritania, and the rest of the surf-rich satellites. With a circuit back in the mother country, waves on tap in their tropical homes, and the ability to develop new and unique styles in splendid isolation, the rest of the world better look out in the next five years.

The US has the Surfer Poll, Australia has the ASL Peer Poll, and now Europe has the Surf Europe Readers' Choice. The magazine actually began a decade ago with a pretty tough remit, to bring surfers together from all nationalities and languages (it's distributed throughout Europe and translated into five different dialects), a bold feat right up there with Sukarno's unification of Indonesia.

But the results seem to be working, and the awards are a sensational acknowledgement of the entire pan-European scene. The official results of their online public voting soiree are: 1.Jeremy; 2.Tiago; 3.Miky; 4.Aritz; 5.Marlon.