Deep cold water wave that hits a monstrous shorebreak.
Think it'd steal your breath too?
Watch: Nazaré Irons out French Girl!
By Derek Rielly
Justine Dupont has a swing at world's biggest
shorebreak…
There’s two things we can safely agree on.
First, getting towed into a big wave ain’t hard. If you can stand,
and you got a ski, you can ride twenty-foot waves. Second, getting
towed into a twenty-foot wave when you’re not ready can be an
easy way of getting dissolved.
In this compelling short, we see the French surfer Justin
Dupont, who is rated twelfth on the women’s qualifying series,
towed into thirty-foot waves at the Portuguese shorebreak
called Nazaré. It mightn’t be hollow, but all that juice will tear
your head off and crush your lungs. A few years ago I’d interviewed
Maya Gabeira the day after she’d been brought back to life via CPR
after a wipeout there that also broke her leg.
“It hit me on my chest and it blew out my life jacket and it
really hurt me. I went down, down, down underwater with no air and
seeing black,” said Maya.
When I had talked about Nazaré being all big-wave schmaltz,
Shane Dorian had told me: “It’s super dangerous… it’s
chaotic… the water’s really angry.”
He ain’t lying.
Watch!
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John John will dissolve heats in 2017, sleepwalking
into the quarters. | Photo: WSL
Your-Way-Too-Early 2017 Tour Preview!
By Derek Rielly
A new grand-slam format. Last year for Margs. John
John to own the first half.
Tour fever. It’s practically in the air!
But you won’t be getting any taste of the high life until
mid-March when the tour’s first of 11 events unskirts at Snapper
Rocks. What’s that give us? Almost six weeks of dead time to beat
our tambourines.
Here’s what’s going to be gradually unwrapped over the course of
2017.
Filipe Toledo will surprise no one and win
Snapper: I’m hardly back out on a limb if I posit that
Filipe is unbeatable at Snapper. Three years ago, he secreted his
hot civet musk all over the little rights, rewriting how fast,
high, and tight, a man could surf. If he didn’t blow his hip out in
his semi-final with Matt Wilkinson last year, he would’ve won the
event, surfed at Bells and Margarets, and taken the title down to
Pipe. Pointedly, the Wilko-for-world-champ narrative would never
have been written.
It’ll be the last year the tour will open with Snapper,
Margaret River, Bells, Rio: The world’s best surfers
in the world’s, uh, not best, but pretty good, wait, used to be
desirable, waves. In the upcoming super rationalisation of the
tour, Margarets will disappear and Bells will hang by a
thread.
Kelly Slater will surprise: There’ll be
no experimentation with boards in heats. The turns will be more
ornate. The old aristocrat, in his final orbit of the tour, will
shine. A thank-you note to a life that’s served him well.
John John will swing out of the first half with a
ten-thousand point lead: Now he gets it. Those
outrageously clean pocket-turns score. The world champion
knows he can sleepwalk through to the quarters, dressing up the
harder heats with jumps when necessary. Third, First, Third,
Second. And then? Fiji, Tahiti, Europe.
The rookies will live up expectations: In
other words, be completely overwhelmed by the superiority of the
incumbent surfers.
A new grand slam format will be
floated: It ain’t a secret that the WSL’s four-day
events (seven days if it’s a guy-gal combo) are too cumbersome to
succeed in getting the kick the WSL wants. Even the most consistent
wave in the world isn’t going to gift a week of good surf, and
through all the tides. What’ll be kicked around is a grand-slam
format where the top eight surfers in the world are flown into a
pumping swell. If it happens it’ll redefine the game.
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Update: “Lamest shit I’ve ever seen!”
By Chas Smith
Welcome to @surferfilms!
A previous rumor suggesting that
Surfing magazine’s Instagram had been sold for $3.5
million has come under scrutiny and is now likely discredited.
Jimmy Wilson, the great Surfing photo editor, responded
just moments ago:
This is incorrect. They changed the @surfing account to
@surferfilms (it had more followers than surfer by the way) and
during the switch grabbed the @surfing handle before anyone else
could take it. Lamest shit I’ve ever seen.
Questions remain. Will @surfing’s younger, larger ex-audience
thrill at the slow-mo longboarding videos @surferfilms posts or
will they revolt en masse, smashing expletives into iPhone screens
on their way out? Will the new @surfing be allowed to grow or kept
at 1 follower and private in order to make @surfer feel better
about itself? Will @surferfilms delete all the images of
Surfing‘s staff from the feed and all the images of
progressive surfing? Will Surfer‘s staff look at the
pictures of progressive surfing and wonder, “What’re these darn
kids doing on their surfboards? Why do their surfboards have three
fins in them?”
Most pressing, will Surfer officially change its
tagline from “The Bible of the Sport” to “The Inertia of Print”
next week or the week after that?
We will be sure to keep you updated.
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Rumor: Surfing sells IG for $3.5 mil!
By Chas Smith
Surfing magazine unloads its followers!
Instagram has become a necessary business tool
in the belt of any successful man about town. He looks at girls, he
looks at wipeouts, he posts a picture of himself at Coachella. If
he is a surf media property he posts pictures of surfers at
Coachella.
And how many followers do you have? Are you jealous of people
you feel beneath you, socially, who have more? Surfer
magazine’s Instagram has 1.2 million followers. Surfing
magazine’s Instagram had near 1 million.
And by had I mean had because look at it today!
Of course you know that Surfing (RIP) folded but what
happens to these followers? Do they die too?
No! They got sold for $3.5 million or that was the rumor
floating through San Clemente’s mists late last night by a very
knowledgable surf industry titan.
Is it true?
Hard to say. It would mean that each man, woman and child on
Surfing’s feed was worth over 3 bucks. Lots lots more than
calculator InstaWorth, which claims brands tend to pay
$5-10 per thousand followers. This is, of course, as an advertising
tool but probably sets the mark for value. Gizmodo
suggests that celebrity accounts with 3 to 5 million followers can
get around 75k per post. So if Surfing was selling posts for 25k
per and doing 100 a year that might be good.
No?
Or maybe Surfing sold its near million Facebook fans
too? And creative director Pete Taras’ very handsome face? And
editor-at-large Taylor Paul’s ability to surf Mavs? And photo
editor Jimmicane’s stake in the Jacksonville Jaguars? And Todd
Prodanovich’s noodle backbone?
Oh wait! Todd Prodanovich edits Surfer! His noodle
backbone ain’t for sale!
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Volcom Pro: Aussie smashes Hawaiians!
By Michael Ciaramella
John and Kelly forfeit the crown!
Today marks the end of the 2017 Volcom Pro, a
contest held in four very different shades of Pipeline. Let’s
recap:
Day one: Northeasterly sand-bottomed
double-ups, most of them unmakeable, but the type of waves that’d
look incredible through photos. There were a few nice rides,
but it was unworthy of wading through the pinches and close-outs to
see something interesting.
Day two: Slightly less sand, somewhat
better swell direction and size. This resulted in cleaner Backdoor
tubes with Makua Rothman nailing the comp’s only perfect ten. A
good day of competition, probably a C+ for Pipeline.
Day three: Death, taxes and Pipeline.
Wait long enough, and you’ll meet all three of ‘em in tremendous
fashion. With Volcom’s ten-day waiting period in mid-February, it
was almost guaranteed that we’d get to see at least one day of epic
surf. This was that day.
Six-to-ten foot silky smooth peaks were on tap for (some of) the
world’s best, granting fantastic rides to John, Seth,
Bruce, Makua, Miguel and more. Interestingly Slater, my passion
pick for this event, crumbled in his first round. He was dealt a
tough heat (Seth, Bruce, and Imaikalani Devault) and fell victim to
a poor start followed by poor wave selection. A fistful of valiant
efforts, but Slater’s magic dust was nowhere to be found. He’s
probably gotta re-up on his deal with the devil.
Finals day: There was a lot of potential. Wonky
in the morning like Pipe usually is, but a few rogue bombs gave me
hope. Perhaps the sun and wind would help the waves congeal into
uniform lines, pushing gaseous vessels in both directions. Instead
the wind went onshore and the swell dropped and Adriano made the
finals in similar conditions to his Pipe Masters victory. Go
figure.
John lost in the semis despite looking significantly better than
any ten guys in the field combined. His absolute control of the
surfboard and willingness to lay it on rail through vertical,
heaving walls is unparalleled. I think he might be
the most talented surfer ever, but then I wasn’t around to see
Jake Patterson in his prime. He also sutured his own ankle
after a fin-collision on finals morning, which is pretty alpha.
The final was delicious medley of international
talent. A multi-cultural buffet. A
Hawaiian-Australian-Brazilian-American salad dressed with a rare
offshore flow. Bruce was the fan-favorite, Adriano the statistical
shoe-in, Griffin my pick and Soli Bailey the classic Aussie
underdog. None of the commentators picked him to win, but sure
enough Soli found every decent wave in the final, pushing him to
victory over an impressive field. Cue the beers!
