"I’m not afraid of death," says Jordy Smith, "but it’s
crosses your mind, like, 'Oh my god, there’s a gun and if he pulls
the trigger I’m dead.' To be in a situation like that, you don’t
think about the physical act of dying, you think about how you’re
not going to live and you’re not going to see your family." |
Photo: Brian Bielmann
JORDY SMITH STABBED IN DURBAN ROBBERY!
By Derek Rielly
Like years ago. But still…
Jordy Smith, the reigning Hurley Pro champion and world
#9, will be 27 in a few months. And that’ll mark the
10-year anniversary of his stabbing in a Durban back street as he
swung home from school.
Who even knew bad things could happen in that Mandela-era
utopia! Wasn’t it a time of coffee-coloured rainbows and a society
freed from the burden of white racism?
Maybe not…
“I’ve been robbed at gunpoint a couple of times,” he says. “And,
this time, as I was walking home I got mugged and stabbed on my
right side at the bottom of the kidney. They rattled my pockets,
put a gun to my head and that was it. They just thought, this is a
kid, that was it. It happened so fast. I was bleeding as I got up.
I was crying at the same time, ran and went to the hospital and got
stitched up.”
Didn’t they ask first before sticking the knife in?
“They don’t ask, hey. They stuck the knife in and took. It’s not
like, ‘Hey can I have your money?’ It’s more so, ‘Get on the
fucking floor, we’re robbing you.'”
I might faint!
“It has its fricken moments, f’sure,” says Jordy. “Another time
was a bunch of young kids. I wasn’t going to put up a fight. I was
15. It was pretty gnarly.”
And what does it feel like to be stabbed?
“I didn’t feel it. It didn’t go too deep. Sliced more than deep.
It was a burning pain. I got such an adrenalin hit and then I
started running and as I was running I felt my side and I realised
what had happened.”
Does the spectre of death scare Jordy?
“I’m not afraid of death but it’s crosses your mind, like, ‘Oh
my god, there’s a gun and if he pulls the trigger I’m dead.’ To be
in a situation like that, you don’t think about the physical act of
dying, you think about how you’re not going to live and you’re not
going to see your family.”
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Brock goes while Bradshaw taps out for a look at what
he mistakenly thinks is a bigger wave behind it. “The… biggest…
mistake… of my competitive career was not catching that wave,” he
says. | Photo: Buzzy Kerbox
FLASHBACK: THE ONE WAVE THAT CHANGED TWO
LIVES
By Anthony Pancia
Brock Little, Ken Bradshaw and the 25-footer that
shaped both their destinies. And it still kills Kenny!
“Aaron Napoleon was just screaming at me,
calling me every goddam name under the sun and just screaming ‘You
go you fucking pussy, you go, go, go.’ There was no doubt in my
mind I was going to make that wave.”
Reckon Brock Little ever gets sick of telling that story?
It’s the Hawaiian winter of 1990, Waimea Bay, the Quiksilver in
Memory of Eddie Aikau.
Look at the image and ask yourself once again. Reckon Brock
Little ever gets sick of telling that story?
Well, would you?
“The thing is at big Waimea, when those big ones come through,
not many people want anything to do with ‘em,” recalls Brock, now
47. “That wave came through and everyone just bolted for the
horizon, everyone except (Ken) Bradshaw and me. We were side by
side and both paddling for it. I took off, he took off and…”
Stop the tape… right… there.
Two careers are seconds away from taking two very different
turns. One will be righteously bathed in glory for eternity; the
other left to ponder what if and temporarily wander the desert like
Moses, searching for internal redemption.
“The… biggest… mistake… of my competitive career was not
catching that wave,” says Ken Bradshaw, now 62, and nearly a
quarter of a century after the event. “He took off and fell and got
all the glory, I kicked out ’cause I knew there was a much bigger
one behind it. But…it just didn’t turn out. Biggest… mistake of my
career.”
But back to Little.
“I knew I was in a good spot to catch that wave, just turns out
I wasn’t in a good spot to ride it,” he says. “Either way, I
paddled my ass off, I clearly remember just wanting it so bad and
it was letting me in.”
Little manages to get to his feet and assumes the same position
he’d done countless times before. “And then I hit a bump, and all
of a sudden I was just skimming down the face like a rock over
shallow water. And the whole time I was just looking up, thinking
to myself, ‘If that lip lands on me I’m dead’. But luckily it
didn’t”
Little then has a few seconds to contemplate what’s in store as
he watches the lip thrown over him. “I remember thinking I was
either get my ass kicked real good or I was going to die. Either
way I was at peace. I put myself in that position and I was happy
with that. But, and I don’t know if I was hallucinating or what at
this point, I then remember being sucked up and over and for a
split-second I could see the whole of Waimea Bay and I just caught
a breath and I think from that point, I knew I was going to be
ok.”
Thousands lining the shore of Waimea Bay see the wipe-out, but
it’s the resulting image of Little, teetering on the brink of
disaster that will end up on walls worldwide for years to come. “I
remember walking up the beach after it, and everyone was looking at
me like they’d seen a ghost,” he says. “But you know, I’m so proud
of that moment. I don’t look back at it and think, ‘What the fuck
was I thinking?’ I’m proud of wanting that wave and I wanted it
real bad.”
Not that his reputation ever needed it, but the moment and a
glorious attempt at a tube ride moments later elevates Little to
the top tier of manliness among the most manliness of line-ups the
world has ever known.
“It’s the same with Healey, Dorian, Jamie, Twiggy and all those
guys,” says Brock. “You either have it or you don’t. You either
want it or you don’t. I mean, I was in pretty good shape at the
time but I knew some of my peers were training harder or what not
but you’d see them out on the big days and you could see that fear
in their eyes.”
As for Bradshaw…
“I don’t think I ever have gotten over that moment. And I’ve
never really spoken to Brock about it either.”
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"This shot was actually one of the days when I went the
deepest I've been," says Brinkley. "We were sitting at about 25
metres just watching him. He was singing so so loud and didn't mind
us being there at all." | Photo: Natalie Parra
Meet the cute surfer girl who swims with
humpback whales
By Derek Rielly
Brinkley Davies on free-diving with humpbacks
(those songs!) and great whites (mystery!)…
You want to date this whale-diving, shark-loving vegan
surfer-ess? Of course you do. Who isn’t captive to that
strewn blond hair and those Paris fashion week black eyebrows! But,
first. One thing. And it’s real important.
Don’t take her to Sea World.
This might be hard to believe but, unlike you and me, when
21-year-old Brinkley thinks of Sea World she doesn’t
imagine smiling dolphins hamming it up for the kids or seals doing
the craziest things with their flippers (and those salty kisses!)
or Orcas and their super-cool tummy slides. Instead, she sees
wretched animals torn from complex social units and condemned to
the most miserable and lonely lives.
“It’s so heartbreaking to see the way they behave in the parks
when you’ve seen them in the wild,” she says. “If all the parks
closed tomorrow I’d be jumping for joy. My life goal would be
complete.”
Buzz kill!
Anyway, I met Brinkley, who was named after the eighties
super-model Christie Brinkley in case y’wondering, last July for a
Stab magazine shoot that I entitled On Closer
Inspection. And how close we inspected! Click here to see!
A few weeks ago she was strolling through Bondi, way out of her
hometown of Moana in South Australia, but I recognised those
eyebrows from a mile away, and we started talking about how she’d
just come back from diving with humpback whales in Tonga. And
before that, working on whale shark boat in Exmouth, Western
Australia.
Brinkley spoke about the deep growls from the humpbacks that
would reverberate through your body, literally shake you from the
inside out, and how awesome, but awesome in its literal sense, it
is to swim 100 feet down without a tank and just six pounds of
weights and interact with animals some scientists believe are more
intelligent than humans.
Every day Brink and her Hawaiian pal Natalie Parra, who’s on the
same level of free diving as Brinkley, like four-minute
static-breath hold good, would dive 80, 100 feet and just watch and
listen. The pair got to know the different individuals. There were
mums and their calves, sometimes with a male escort who’d be
hanging around partly to protect but mostly to fuck; and singing
whales that’d remain vertical underwater, heads down, tails up,
singing their large hearts out.
There were close calls, of course. You can’t dive with
leviathans and expect to it to be risk free. One lazy slap of a
tail or a pec fin and you ain’t coming up. And Brink recalls
watching one mom humpback suddenly flap its tail as its calf dived
down from above. Brink doesn’t know if it was protecting its kid or
it was excited to see it. Either way, it just missed.
And Brinkley laughs about the more comical aspects of
free-diving such as when gravity disappears at 40-feet and you
just… sink. Her pal Natalie has a GoPro clip of a whale and,
there, Brinkley sails through the frame, downward.
Brinkley is five weeks away from finishing her Bachelor of
Science in marine biology, a degree you can ramp up to honours with
another year on campus or even a PHD if you wanna stick around uni
for the rest of your youth, but Brink is going to hit the road. Or
at least the ocean. She knows you don’t learn about whales and
sharks by sitting in a classroom. Field studies. Yeah, that’s where
it’s at.
Like at Exmouth while working on a whale shark boat. Operators
are pretty quick to tell tourists there aren’t great whites or
indeed any of the more dangerous makes but Brinkley saw ’em all,
tigers, whites, bulls sharks, bronzes and reef sharks.
And you wanna know something? The tigers didn’t want to be
bothered (they’re too busily lazily scavenging scraps), whites are
aloof, bronze whalers are skittery as all hell, reef sharks are
like yapping dogs and the smaller they are the more aggressive they
appear to be, and bull sharks are placid unless aroused by blood or
some kinda dying fish activity.
What’s next for the kid? She wants to swim with orcas, pods of
pilot whales (hundreds at a time), she’s going to work on a great
white dive boat in South Australia that doesn’t bait or chum to
attract sharks, and therefore you see the animals in a normalised
environment and not in the throes of attack, might move to Byron to
dive with sharks off Julian Rocks, or maybe even Hawaii with her
pal Natalie.
Makes those gals strutting around the bars in their dagger heels
and with the cantilevered cans and fish pouts look kinda vapid,
don’t it.
Brinkley made this clip below just for BeachGrit. The
vocals are from the bull (guy humpback) and right at the end you’ll
see a female charge the bull. Long story short. Bulls hang around
ostensibly to protect the calf but their motive is mostly to fuck,
as I mentioned earlier. And so he’ll hang at the bottom and
get the kid to swim down to him so the mom follows and then… maybe…
he’ll get some. But at the end the gal, furious, charges the horny
bull for luring the kid away. Sista!
"One of my biggest-ever mistakes was not
partying the year I didn’t re-qualify," says Cory. "I just took it
all too seriously that year and I ended up not re-qualifying. I
should have partied hard that year, harder than other years. It
might have been the key element in re-qualifying."
Cory Lopez: The Dumb Things I’ve Done
By Derek Rielly
Why'd the hell I give my wife a pre-nup (I ain't
got nuthin!). And that year I didn't party on tour? What was I
thinking?
1. GIVING MY WIFE A PRE-NUP: I presented her
with a pre-nuptial agreement about a month before we were going to
be married and she bailed on me 10 days before the wedding. She was
over it. The pre-nup didn’t work for her. She’s my wife now, but it
took about another five years of work before we got married.
2. JERKY BOYS: Being such a jerk to my friends
when I was young. We used to call my friends from down the road
over to play and then we’d hide in the bushes and attack them with
paintball guns, just totally obliterate them.
3. NO FUN: Not partying the year I didn’t
re-qualify. It’s easy to look back and say I should done this or I
shoulda done that, but if truth be told, I just took it all too
seriously that year and I ended up not re-qualifying. I should have
partied hard that year, harder than other years. It might have been
the key element in re-qualifying.
4. BOATS AND PALS: Lending my boat to my pal
Freddy. We were having this massive house party and my mate Freddy
was hassling me to use the boat. It was a nice 13-footer moored by
the river and Freddy was with a chick and wanted to impress her and
take the boat out I was having none of it. It was a big party and I
didn’t feel comfortable with anyone on the boat in the river at
all. Freddy eventually became just way too much for me to deal with
and I told him to just take the boat, but to be careful. So he took
the boat with the girl in it and crashed it into a pylon or
something and totally destroyed it. I should never have lent my
boat to Freddy.
5. LOSING A PORSCHE: … by not being in contact
overseas. I was away on the tour and while I was away there was a
local giveaway contest and the prize was a Porsche. All the local
athletes were entered in it from my area and I was entered
automatically. I was away and didn’t have a worldpPhone and
couldn’t take the call. The guy phoned me for 10 days and left
voice messages every day saying, like, “Dude I really wanna give
you this Porsche, but you have to call me.” In the end they gave
the Porsche to some other person. It was this awesome Porsche, all
glass on top, I don’t know which one it was, I felt too sick to
take a close look at the pictures when I finally picked up his 10
voice messages
6. NOT T-BONING KELLY SLATER AT TEAHUPOO: It
was a quarter-final paddle battle, I forget which year, and I was
in front and on the outside. All I had to do was swing left and
t-bone him into the reef and I would have had it. If I had pushed
him he would have been on the reef and he wouldn’t have been able
to get another wave. As it was, I didn’t, he beat me in the paddle
battle, and got the next wave. He needed a big score, like an 8.9
or something and he got a 9.2 and advanced and I was left wondering
why I didn’t just push him onto the reef. Big mistake.
7. GOING TO THE WORLD AMATEURS: It was a huge
mistake going to the 2004 World Amateur Champs in Brazil. Pink
Floyd was playing in Miami while I was going to be away and all my
friends were going, but I headed for Brazil. On the night of the
final concert Pink Floyd announced that that was their last-ever
concert. I missed it. How did I do at the event? I can’t even
remember. I think I got a second, or maybe a third, but nobody
remembers a second-place finish, let alone a third.
8. FIGHTING A FOOTBALL TEAM: We were out for
the night and the club had just closed and a bunch of football
player jerks were causing some nasty shit with this girl, cussing
her and stuff, so my mates and I went over to sort it out and to
tell these dudes to back off. We all woke up in ambulances, we were
black and blue and totally beaten. Looking back, the girl was just
getting cussed and we took serious punishment, so we probably
should have left well enough alone and just walked away. No one
wants to wake up in an ambulance.
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RESULTS! SHARKS MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE
ATTACKED SURFER!
By Anthony Pancia
Slain great whites may have vomited up man's hands
after being caught, says Fisheries…
The two great whites pulled out of the
crystal-clear waters of Esperance, Western Australia, just hours
after the attack on surfer Sean Pollard have been examined, and,
well…
“We are unable to confirm whether either
shark was involved in the incident,” Department of Fisheries’
principal shark scientist Dr Rory McAuley said.
Dr McAuley said while the results were
inconclusive, it was not uncommon for sharks to disgorge their
stomach contents when they were caught. “Jaw measurements
will also help with future bite investigations. The first
white shark caught is 3.46 metres long; the second white shark is
2.68 metres in length.”
The thief dropped the jewels after
the robbery, m’lud! Guilty as charged!
Dr McAuley says his team of scientists
gathered sections of each shark’s vertebrae, which will assist in
further research. He also said that while bite marks left on Sean’s
board did not match either of the sharks, “Indications are that a
white shark was responsible for the injuries he received.”
He did not mention who gets to keep the
jaws of either shark.
A local fishing boat operator, who asked
not to be identified, told BeachGrit there was a fairly
obvious connection between the migratory pattern of whales and an
influx of big sharks.
“It happens every year, but, you’d have
to say it seems to be worse this year. I saw one that must have
been six meters a couple weeks ago” he, or she, said. “And the
scary thing is, the whale season’s kinda only kicking off, still
got a couple months to go.”
The operator said no one in the town was
overjoyed that two sharks had been killed, everyone was happy there
were two less big sharks in the water. He, or she, also said the
speed in which the sharks were caught had more to do with where the
Department of Fisheries boat was moored as anything else. “It’s
moored at Bandy Creek which is only five k’s from where the attack
happened. They were good to go and got out and got the job done.
I’d love to know how they got the big one in though. The boat’s
only six metres and one of the sharks was four metres.
He, or she, also thought the phrase
“Humanely destroyed” put forward by authorities at the time, meant
only one thing.
