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.”
I surfed with Ken once on the NS. He was a dick.