Wiped from the tour. Barely able to surf. But, now, a baby with pop star girlfriend!
What a wild old ride Owen Wright has been on this year. After what was officially mandated as a surf-related brain injury at Pipeline in December, Owen pulled out of the first six events of 2016.
One month later, it was reported,
“Serious concerns surround the health of 2015 surfing world title contender, Owen Wright. Fears that Wright is still having trouble speaking and even standing have spread throughout tight-lipped surfing community…revealed he was still struggling with amnesia just last week.”
In February, Owen looked fragile as hell as he embraced his sister Tyler after she won the gal’s event at Snapper.
And two weeks ago, the rest of Owen’s 2016 WSL season was officially wiped.
So, now, after everything, ain’t it something to hear that his pop star girlfriend Kita Alexander is laden with child.
“I’ve gone through some really challenging life experiences this year but the most amazingly beautiful thing has come out of it,” says Owen, alongside his pregnant girl (on his IG account @owright). “Enjoying every moment but the future couldn’t look any better.”
Ms Alexander, in case you didn’t know, is the chanteuse whose (hit) songs have the easy temper of a warm summer’s day.
She surfs too!
Watch her wonderful song My Own Way, here…
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Don't you love the… immediacy… of King's work? "I just have my iPhone running. Most of Tour Notes is shot on an iPhone. I have a RED camera but I just look at it." | Photo: Peter King
Follow Filipe Toledo's effortless win at the US Open!
I doubt I’m alone in suggesting that no other filmer has such a clear window into the pro game as La Jolla’s Peter King.
I’ve followed the former pro surfer-celebrity chanteuse’s career through its highs and its highs. As for TourNotes, which King makes for the surf clothing company Hurley, he says: “I was on tour for three-and-a-half years, back when girls wanted to hang with Shaun Tomson and Rabbit Bartholomew and were 35 years old and wore high-waisted bikinis, do cocaine and all those things I didn’t know about. And what do I remember about my time on the tour? It isn’t the heats. I wanna show the fun. I want to show the silly little conversations.”
In this episode, King follows Filipe Toledo, “throughout his obvious and effortless win. No one else would have been as fun to watch won, that’s for sure. Most of it was filmed from the Sao Paulo section of the bleachers. Only this group could make tiny Huntington seem more exciting that the Olympics…”
As for the Toledos and Filipe’s upcoming role as a daddy, “They are known as the SurfamilyToledo … so the more the merrier!”
Filipe, meanwhile, split California to Kandui resort in the Mentawais straight after his win. He’ll be there till Tahiti!
Kai Lenny, who is twenty three years old and lives on Maui, is an expert in the disciplines of surfing, windsurfing, SUP and kitesurfing. Yesterday Kai won the Molokai to Oahu paddle in a world record time. "The hardest thing I've ever done," says Kai. | Photo: Courtesy Kai Lenny
Maui hydrofoiler-surfer-kitesurfer-SUP stud wins world's most tedious race!
Doesn’t Kai Lenny make your mouth water! Yesterday, the surfer-hydrofoiler-kitesurfer-SUP from Maui won the stand-up div of the famous-infamous thirty-two mile Molokai-to-Oahu race in a world record time.
Lenny found his win with a record-time of 4:07:41, besting rival and three-time M2O champ Connor Baxter’s 2014 record by 27 seconds. The victory is “a dream come true” for Lenny, who spent the last four years hunting an M2O title with top-4 finishes each year, including a runner-up victory behind 2015 champ, Travis Grant, who finished second today. Connor Baxter rounded out the top-3 with a time of 4:16:19, after the leading trio broke away from a stacked pack of hungry elite racers, including in-form Aussies James “Jimmy” Casey, Toby Cracknell and Matt Nottage, who finished fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been that focused in a race before,” Lenny said at the finish. “This is by far the hardest event I’ve ever done.”
The Quiksilver New Wave Highline technical boardshort retails for $200. Absurd? Let's review!
The technical boardshort has been with us for near a decade now. Space-aged materials meet unimaginable performance. The future!
And I have sat firmly on the sidelines as this future has unfolded. You know my predilections by now. Very small in the leg. Very thick cotton in the material. Keep your four-way stretch and fast dry. Gimme style! Gimme sex!
BeachGrit makes a very sex trunk, so does Banks but I wondered, nearly a decade on, what I have been missing in the future? I did not want to become the crusty man who refuses to accept change. Who can’t listen to the new Neon Hitch album because his mind can’t adjust to new beats.
So the future. I looked at Hurley’s Phantom Hyperweave ($150), Rip Curl’s Mirage ($100) and Billabong’s Tribong x Airline ($150) before settling on Quiksilver’s New Wave Highline because it cost $50 more than the nearest competitor ($200). Looking your competitor squarely in the eye and raising not folding? Those are the kind of guts I appreciate. My canvas St. Laurent Vans rip-offs cost $500. My Tom Ford Ray-Ban rip-offs cost $600.
And therefore I got a pair, black with white piping making a vee on the leg, scalloped leg, 31 waist. They came. I put them on and admired myself in the mirror and thought, “Not bad.” They fit perfectly at the waist, some very future thing that was both stiff and flexible, and didn’t fall all weird, ending just below mid-thigh. Most importantly they were trim. Not boxy.
I spun around for a good few minutes then loaded up my board, a Mayhem Short Round ($500) and went surfing.
And was shocked. Have you surfed in the future? Water somehow and magically did not stick to me. I was freed from the very strictures of biology, or earth sciences, and could move and twist and jive. I was a man reborn and felt very much like Navin R. Johnson. “Well if this is out there, think how much MORE is out there!”
Yes, I can whole-heartedly say that the Quiksilver New Wave Highline future is wonderful thing, a thing that I recommend, a thing that you need. Like all absurdly expensive artifacts, its price tag adds to its charm.
The cherry, though? When I finally got home my wife looked at me and said, “What are those trunks. They’re sexy.”
Oh gimme sex!
(And I know you. You are scowling and saying, “Fucking bullshit advertorial…” but I can’t hear you because I’m too busy shopping for a Raf Simons letter sweater ($600) and listening to Neon Hitch.)
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“I’ve always been about aesthetic, something that generally looks or feels good, or has a good vibe to it, but I’m pretty sick of shit that looks cool but has no substance.” | Photo: Steve Sherman/Surfing/Photo Union Worker
Do you think surfing has lost some of itsmerry now that Dane Reynolds has disappeared from the stage? Do you miss those goofy, but quietly profound, post-heat interviews, Dane’s honesty wrapped up in a comforter of aw shucks?
Dane is also capable of a luminosity of thought unequalled among surfing’s barbarians. Here are 10 quotes (taken from interviews with Chas Smith and Morgan Maassen) which, if followed, will make your life immensely more enjoyable.
Let’s dip our fingers into his soup.
1. “Thinking of holding back is blowing it more than pushing your hardest and falling.”
Interpretation: We all do it. Draw the same lines on waves. Fall off on the same air attempts. Same steps. Same everything. Everything is half-assed. What does it matter if we made the wave. One violent little huck will give you more pleasure than a hundred lip taps.
2. “I hate watching movies. There have been three movies I’ve ever enjoyed. Movies kind of creep me out. They take too much commitment.”
Interpretation: In our beds, in our hotel rooms, on planes, we squander our precious hours on pointless reels. If you’re going to watch a movie, make it count.
3. “I don’t need perfect reef breaks.”
Interpretation: That whole hang-up about getting good waves? Screw it. Forget the tides. Forget the swell events. Drive to your favourite spot. Board in car. Ride whatever. Name reefs are so… jock!
4. “I’ve gotten to where I am because, fuck, in high school I was obsessed with it and obsessed with improving.”
Interpretation: Do you really want to be good at surfing? Or is it something you… think… you want to be? If you want it, it’s there. But it takes time and all of your mind. Obsess. Obsess. Obsess. And you’ll get good.
5. “I want to be positive and have hope, but a lot of shit I see bugs me.”
Interpretation: Trump, Hillary, and a race war warmed up by a liberal media and frightened, over-armed cops. Dear god, you give us Obama then… this?
6. “Shit, I don’t really like cities.”
Interpretation: Yeah, it’s chic to dig on the New York vibe but after a week you’re crying to get to a beach.
7. “I’ve always been about aesthetic, something that generally looks or feels good, or has a good vibe to it, but I’m pretty sick of shit that looks cool but has no substance.”
Interpretation: Lose the soul arch.
8. “I don’t even think of surfing as tricks, it’s just one motion.”
Interpretation: It’s a holistic thing. Compartmentalise when you’re learning the pieces, then bring it all home.
9. “Once you get to a certain level of surfing, it’s your art. So it’s undeniable to say Gabriel Medina is amazing at progressive surfing but it also doesn’t really resonate with me.”
Interpretation: It ain’t all about points.
10. “Big-wave surfing’s not relatable to me. It’s like playing chicken.”
Interpretation: What’s the fun in dying? And surfing’s about fun… right?
