Speed, power, flow, innovation and degree of difficulty!

Watch: Your Daily Dose of Yago!

Name ten people who surf better... y'can't!

I almost posted this video of Brazilian charge-dog Diego Santos, as his tubular prowess is truly something to behold. But then I thought, no. Yago is better.

And so what if this video is an advert for a skateboard company, and half the clips are artsy sidewalk carves? The surfing clips are B-grade Yago, which is like, A-grade anyone else.

It’s true, I’m a Dora fanboy. His style, technique, and progressive flair are too hot to ignore. And it ain’t just me! I’ve heard that freesurf guys hate going on trips with him because he sticks absolutely everything, but also love going on trips with him because he’s a legend of a human.

Despite the fact he could easily thrive in the freesurfing realm, Yago has opted to pursue the QS in order to earn a spot on the top thirty-four. So far he’s doing alright for himself, with a win at a QS 6,000 that’s put him in the number two slot on the season. He’ll need much more come Sunset, though.

Yago’s one of those guys who I’d love to see on Tour, but I wouldn’t wanna lose his freesurfing talents in the process. The harsh reality is that if you want to succeed on the CT, you’ve gotta do everything in your power to make heats. That means avoiding injury and learning to surf consistently conservatively. And to lose Yago’s je ne sais quoi would be a damn shame.

Anyways, the clip!


Man Hit by 20-Foot White Rides Again!

Loses leg in attack. Gets a plastic stilt and surfs again! What spirit!

I doubt if there’s a more beautiful creature in the ocean than the White Pointer, the Great White, White Death. Those formidable teeth resting on the glistening red underlip, the beauty of her white underbody, the roundness of her girth.

Closer inspection of such titanic beauty, of course, is never wise.

Two years ago, South Australian surfer Chris Blowes was surfing an easy wave called The Right near Port Lincoln, a tuna fishing town on the Eyre Peninsula. Plenty of fish. Plenty of sharks.

Chris, who was twenty six, was sitting upright on his board among a pack of a dozen guys, a few metres from rocks, when what witnesses described as a 20-foot great white attacked and swam away with his leg and surfboard.

‘I was just watching the shark go out to the ocean with his board still attached. Obviously the shark still had his leg and he was still swimming around with it,’ one surfer told the Adelaide Advertiser.

“I remember being its mouth,” he said. “All those thoughts come rushing through your head … ‘I don’t want to die … I don’t want to die’.”

Pals rescued Chris before the twenty-footer could have another swing and used leashes as a tourniquet. Chris’ heart stopped for an hour-and-a-half, clinically dead, etc.

He survived, and now shuttles around on the one remaining stilt.

But that don’t mean he can’t shred, or at least wet his five remaining toes.

Now, we see Chris, twenty eight, surfing with the prosthetic leg that was a gift from the local community. (A Facebook page Chris Blowes Support was set up to raise cash.)

It’s a helluva thing, don’t you think?

Would you get back in the drink after a Great White had swum off with your leg (and your sled) and you were laying on the beach without a pulse?


Surf journalist pictured after finishing wonderful interview with Kai Otton.
Surf journalist pictured after finishing wonderful interview with Kai Otton.

Surf journalism: “An invincible summer!”

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Our dear Michael Ciaramella posted a recent bit where he exhorted us all to Watch: Our Competitor’s Film! I wondered, when I read the headline who our competitor was, clicked on and saw that it was What Youth. “But oh!” I thought to myself. “What Youth is not our competition. We’re fellow travelers! Just like Milo Yiannopoulos and the alt-right!”

And it is true. What Youth and The Surfer’s Journal bookend all that is good in surfing. The boys stitch together brilliant magazines, each and every one a treasure and sometimes I get to come and play too. The  below appears, in full, in What Youth issue 17 which feat. the beautiful Chippa Wilson on cover. It deals with career choices.

Buy the issue here! And read a little taste here!

I once dreamed of throwing off this empty yoke. Of finishing with surf and taking up only journalism and meaning something again. I went to Ukraine right after Kiev’s population burned the city center to the ground in protest of a government linked too closely to Russia. An angry mist hung in the air and angry Ukrainians manned make-shift bunkers, waiting to fight to the death for what they believed. It meant something. It meant life or death. It was important.

I chatted with Bernie Sander’s chief of staff as that movement was cranking to full volume last year. He spoke of the dreams, hopes, perils of America’s youth. He spoke of what could be done, politically, to create a bright future or at least a future the kids could be proud of. He spoke of fear, terror, health care, free university education, music, art, literature and it was important.

I interviewed with General David Petraeus on stage at a hedge fund conference in front of millionaires and billionaires waiting to invest trillions. He was once a general and once the director of the CIA and had a widely reported affair with a reporter. A journalist! And we went back and forth about China and Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden and ISIS and gas prices and security. The weight of the investing world hinged on our conversation. Whole markets ready to rise or fall. It was important.

And then I came back to surfing. To surfing journalism. I left Ukraine, I didn’t even write up the Bernie story and I laughed with David Petraeus. Why? To be honest I don’t really know. But what is knowledge? I gots none! I feel there is some magic in this absurd. In this surfing.

French Algerian author Albert Camus wrote so much about it. He was not a surf journalist but wrote the absurd is man’s great fight. That none of this means anything but it is our greatest struggle to make sense of it.
He wrote about pushing stones up hills that continue to roll down and we continue to push them back up. He wrote about the emptiness. The terrible feeling that nothing is actually important. He wrote, “At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.”

But do you know what he also wrote?

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

Now that’s what I’m talking about. Surf journalism. The invincible summer.

Ha!


Victory: Slater Designs wins award!

Proving you WRONG is what he does!

Oh you love to get angry at Kelly Slater’s surfboards don’t you though? You say:

“Kelly’s equipment just looks wrong!”

“Its actually sad seeing the goat suck so badly!! Please john just lend slats a pyzel sled so he can bury a fucking rail!”

“PLEASE KELLY< get on a fucking different board!!! a SemiPro, or something.. his turns have hiccups in every front side delivery.. he is still a beast.. his barrels deep, his floaters and airs high.. PLEASE shape a semi pro and put an infinity sign on it or something.. god dam!!!”

And seeing as Kelly Slater has maybe not gotten the best results since he’s jumped from Channel Islands over to the new Slater Designs your complaints might seem to hold water.

But they don’t! Apparently you don’t know shit about surfboards because Slater Designs just won the Surf Industry Manufacturing Association’s Breakout Brand of the Year at last Thursday’s award’s ceremony at the Slater Design SCI-FI won Performance Shortboard of the Year!

Boooooya, haters!

Does this news make you rethink your ability to correctly judge a surfboard’s quality? Will you trade in your trusty “normal” surfboard by day’s end and upgrade to a Slater? Will you write Kelly an apology for the mean things you’ve written?

All three?

Good. That’s probably smart. And get ready to fall a lot and not really complete any moves. Sorry. I mean get ready to WIN!


Finale! Girl Goes Into Orbit!

Can Filipe Toledo teach Lakey Peterson how to nail a full-rotation air in four days? Watch!

If you’ve followed this four-part Girl Goes Into Orbit series you’ll know where we’ve been and what to expect in the final episode.

In case you’re new to the game, here’s the story: one month ago, BeachGrit, took the pro surfer Lakey Peterson to Mexico with one goal – to land a four-foot-above-the-lip full-rotation air.

Call it a 540 if you want. Call it an air 360 if that thrills too.

It’s been a pet project of mine to push women’s surfing beyond what is, mostly, a series of often stylish, often not, top turns and cutbacks. Why don’t girls do airs? Why should they? Only reason the men are doing ’em in competition is because of Gabriel, Filipe, Jordy, Julian, Josh Kerr and John John.

My theory is girls surf alongside boys until their early teens, and since it takes a fair bit of guts to get out there among the boys, the girls are usually among the best. Then, instead of improving alongside the boys as they get older, they plateau as they surf in girl-only competitions.

List the excuses you hear about girls and airs. They don’t have the physical strength. They don’t have the ability.

It’s all one big misconception.

Kids do ’em. Kooks can do ’em.

Why not girls?

My theory is girls surf alongside boys until their early teens, and since it takes a fair bit of guts to get out there among the boys, the girls are usually among the best. Then, instead of improving alongside the boys as they get older, they plateau as they surf in girl-only competitions.

And, since being a pro is such a thing, they train with coaches, but instead of growing into great surfers they turn into great competitors.

So let’s work on it.

To accelerate a process that John John says takes a couple of years, and compress it into four days Filipe Toledo and Brett Simpson joined Lakey as tutors. She’d surf. Come in. Swipe back and forth with the Hurley Surf Club app that gives a split-screen, side-by-side comparison with two surfers. In our case, Filipe’s airs and Lakey’s air attempts.

Cruel? Not as much as you’d think. Because Lakey can surf.

How’d it play out? Watch!

And, if you missed the other three episodes, watch those here.