Gimme: More sharks! More wipeouts!

Two things the world can't get enough of!

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it many times. The general non-surfing public will click on two things when it comes to our favorite dance.

1) Shark attack.

2) Big wave wipeout.

The World Surf League short film “Shark attacks Mick Fanning at J-Bay Open” has been viewed over 24 million times on YouTube. That is, like, 24 million times more than the next WSL production.

In second place is the wipeout reel. The Big Wave Awards just released this year’s and it has made the USA Today and Bleacher Report. Let’s watch!

Bleacher Report writes:

Those of you who enjoy surfing as a hobby may want to think twice about viewing the video above.

As Hemal Jhaveri of USA Today’s For the Win explained Wednesday, the World Surf League recently announced its nominees for the 2017 Wipeout of the Year award, which it will hand out at the Big Wave Awards in Huntington Beach, California, on April 29.

In anticipation of that event, the WSL released a video of the nominated spills, and the footage is jarring.

Truth be told, we’re not sure if it would be worse to be the person who fell from the very top of a wave or the individual swallowed by the water near the base.

Hmmmmm.

Anyhow, when Mick Fanning got bumped by a shark it got 24 million views. When he got bumped yesterday by Kanoa Igarashi it got 152 views. Let’s post that too and try to grow its numbers so Kanoa feels more valuable than a shark.

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Not champagne, and a Sunbeam Alpine, but close enough...
Not champagne, and a Sunbeam Alpine, but close enough...

Update: “I was wrong!”

Keep surfing on tour Kelly Slater!

I’d be the second person, after my ex-wife, to tell you that I am not perfect. I sometimes make mistakes. Sometimes speak without really thinking. Sometimes forget to weigh all the possibilities in a scenario. Sometimes get re-married before being officially divorced thus getting to be, all too briefly, a fabulous bigamist.

Or like this morning, I wrote a bit about how age catches us all and it seems like it might have just caught Kelly Slater, a man who appeared to defy those very odds. I wondered if it was time for him to figure some thing to do with his time other than get embarrassed by young boys.

But thank God for you. Because when I do make mistakes you are there to gently correct. To set me back on the correct path and this morning my dear Negatron did just that. In the comments underneath the Kelly Get Lost bit he wrote…

Kelly phase 2, please…. quits competing, stays on tour as a total boss… commentating, interviewing, scaffolding supervisor… hopefully turning up two weeks early and staying on a week post comp, dropping edits and embarrassing tour surfers with his performances for another decade {or two}
No disrespect, but he reminds me of a scarf wearing middle aged man driving a champagne coloured convertible Porsche. Sure, it’s the fastest car when the lights go green, but Dude, the colour! and that flowing scarf?

A scarf wearing middle aged man driving a champagne coloured convertible Porsche? There is, honestly, no aesthetic vision that appeals to me more. That, and precisely that, is what I will someday be (maybe in five years fingers crossed on book sales etc.).

Thank you Negs. Thank you for setting me straight.

And Kelly? Stay right where you are, gorgeous!

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Real talk: Age is a cruel mister!

But the sun also sets!

Few things give me as much pleasure as reading Longtom’s analyses on BeachGrit. Matt Warshaw and Derek Rielly’s conversations, when Mike Ciaramella calls me a kiss ass, when Ian Kanga Cairns calls me a gutter writer. Those things, maybe, but Steve Shearer sure does know how to keep me giggling.

And, very quickly, what is protocol with handles? Am I supposed to use Longtom only or is it ok to also use Shearer? I’ll defer to his judgement.

In any case, Kelly Slater. Steve wrote:

For now, lets look at Kelly’s numbers. They’re bad, man. How bad? Real bad.
Kelly rode 44 waves for an average wave score of, what? Take a guess. Five? Six?
3.87.

Under four in surf that was mostly good to great Snapper Rocks, one of the most rippable waves on earth. Only one of those 44 waves (2.27%) made the excellent eight-plus range. A perfect wave he flubbed so badly it should have been a 10. That wave was the source of the awks Fanning locker-room, bun-in-the-oven exchange (more on that in a minute.)

His average heat score after seven heats including today is a princely 12.57. It’s a miracle Kelly made the quarters at Snapper. His is a surfer in steep decline, according to the numbers.

Normally I would mock, for fun, and offer some anecdotal evidence to Kelly Slater being different, better. Him lulling the competition to sleep with poor performance only to wack on the head with an unprecedented dance at Bells, or something. Except I was just with my favorite ever surfer, the great Michael Tomson, and we were talking about Pipeline. I asked if he still surfed out there and he said:

Never! Wouldn’t even CONSIDER it. It is terrifying, man. There comes a point in time when it doesn’t matter how hard you’ve trained, how fit you are, how many hours you’ve put in, how good your equipment is. Fuck all. you’re still not going to make that drop and it’s because reflex. You don’t have that reflex. At the time you’re not thinking. But thinking can get you caught from behind.

That point in time comes for everyone. Has it officially come for our Kelly?

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Santos is a man possessed!

Watch: Bruno Santos Is My Hero!

The man has it all!

We can’t all be John John. Most of us can’t even be Cheyne Magnusson. But if I could be one surfer, any surfer at all, it’d have to be Brazil’s Bruno Santos.

Y’see, Bruno’s got it made. Family man, tube fiend, world traveler on Rip Curl’s dime. There’s no pressure on contest results (though he wins the Teahupo’o trials like… every year, and even dominated the whole event once), nor is there need to launch himself off ankle-breaking sections. The big tube gig can be very scary, true, but when you’ve got the best technique in the biz it’s child’s play!

For the self-help type, Bruno’s tube mastery can be achieved with this simple eight-step system: Feet flat, bend at the knees, ride on the middle of the board lengthwise, but feet slightly toward the inside rail, don’t blink, head and weight centered, arms point towards the channel, fart for exit speed.

Watch as Bruno completely embarrasses Guillermo Satt at a few anonymous ocean slabs, in this installment of The Search. If Bruno’s technical ability and general derring-do don’t get you off, try tightening that belt a bit! If your face hasn’t achieved a hint of periwinkle, it can hardly be called auto-erotic.

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You think surely something has to happen. Something. In the way that something always happened when Kelly paddled out in his prime. John John chose to live or die on the back ledge and finally speared a keeper. And then a flat-spin-to-full-rote with a duck pillow landing. But still it wasn't quite… happening. | Photo: WSL/Robertson

Analysis: Margs Pro “like disaster porn!”

North Point is like Mundaka. Unless it's pumping, holding a contest there smacks of desperation.

Margaret River, Day one: 

Were you convinced after Snapper, that Slater had lost control of his fundamentals? I contacted my old buddy Nate Silver from sports/politics blog 538.com to run the ruler over the stats for Slats’ opening event as soon as Dell asked me to cover day one at Margs.

Apart from screwing the pooch on Trump like every other pollster, Nate’s the best numbers man in the biz. Me and Nate got tight after an horrific aquatic accident on Lake Okeechobee chasing a fall edge bite when Todd Kline rammed us at 50 miles per hour in his new Skeeter. That gave me an invaluable insight into the American judicial system, another story for a different time.

For now, lets look at Kelly’s numbers. They’re bad, man. How bad? Real bad.

Kelly rode 44 waves for an average wave score of, what? Take a guess. Five? Six?

3.87.

Under four in surf that was mostly good to great Snapper Rocks, one of the most rippable waves on earth. Only one of those 44 waves (2.27%) made the excellent eight-plus range. A perfect wave he flubbed so badly it should have been a 10. That wave was the source of the awks Fanning locker-room, bun-in-the-oven exchange (more on that in a minute.)

His average heat score after seven heats including today is a princely 12.57. It’s a miracle Kelly made the quarters at Snapper. His is a surfer in steep decline, according to the numbers.

You think, surely, something has to happen. Something. In the way that something always happened when Kelly paddled out in his prime. John John chose to live or die on the back ledge and finally speared a keeper. And then a flat-spin-to-full-rote with a duck-pillow landing. But still it wasn’t quite… happening.  

We won’t go heat by heat from today. That’s crazy when the heat analyser is up and the twelve rounds saw so few highlights.

But, a few observations from day one.

  • There’s now no functional difference between backside and frontside for tuberiding at the elite level. North Point is a technical tuberide with a secondary section, pinching top tube and waves that split in two. None of which bothered the goofies.
  • Pros got totally lost in the lineup whether front or backside. The cognitive dissonance between the hype from the commentary and the often embarrassing performances from pros who clearly had no clue about the lineup reached it’s sparkling apotheosis when the best wave of the heats rifled down the ledge unridden, to be mind-surfed by Strider in the channel. It was a day to give viewers blueballs. So much teasing, so little release.
  • You think, surely, something has to happen. Something. In the way that something always happened when Kelly paddled out in his prime. John John chose to live or die on the back ledge and finally speared a keeper. And then a flat-spin-to-full-rote with a duck-pillow landing. But still it wasn’t quite… happening.  

It’s tempting now to spend every minute of the webcast as an indulgence in disaster porn, as a front row seat to the last days of the Roman Empire. North Point is like Mundaka. Unless it’s fully pumping, holding a contest there smacks of quixotic desperation.

Will Margies be cut from the Tour? Put yourself into the heart and mind of a suit from the city of Perth getting duchessed by the WSL and local glad handlers. Was that an impressive spectacle? Worth the few million a year the WA state government pumps into it? That would get a whole series of comps in Indonesia. A backup plan for the WSL? Go Third World while the brown man is still cheaper than the white man. How much of a Tour do they need to make a title?

It’s tempting now to spend every minute of the webcast as an indulgence in disaster porn, as a front row seat to the last days of the Roman Empire. North Point is like Mundaka. Unless it’s fully pumping, holding a contest there smacks of quixotic desperation.

Would three events in Indo do it? So many gorgeous what if’s.

What did you think of the rookies? Yes, they can surf, as Mike C noted. But as far as a bankable skill set for pro surfers go that’s not the number one priority. You need a marketable narrative. Unless your name is Bede Durbidge, pro surfing hates a hype-free rookie, a potential journeyman. A story is shield and spear for pro surfers. A story-less pro is a wounded gazelle on the savannah. They get chewed up and spat out and no-one laments their passing. Shrinking surf industry money meant a shrivelled up ad revenue for mags and hence less copy space, less ads for chancers on the QS. They now come to the CT as rank unknowns, a pretty queer turn of events for a pro sport.

I found one today though. Ian Gouveia. What a little card. He’s the Brazilian Mason Ho. An insanely stylish little hyper-active fire plug of a surfer. How was that little double shaka kick out and the instinctive backside tube-riding? Brazilian goofies got the best waves of the day. That’s truth.

Owen Wright made the millions watching online all over the world wince when he wore a sledgehammer lip to the head. He paddled away. Is that a successful stress test of the brain? I say yes.

Unlike Chas I see surf journalism as noble, as spiritual defence against days like these. I aspire to be the very best under-employed ( by choice, motherfucker) surf journalist in the game. It’s hard to come up with the words to summarise the game today.

The day got weird. Those backlit buffed Indian Ocean lines but no scores. It was a patient with the lifeforce ebbing away, leaving a beautiful corpse.

Those Drug Aware ads killed me. Aspire to be the best you can be. I haven’t touched a drug for months/weeks (at least weeks), not a beer, not a joint, nothing, apart from one dexy when my mate sold his house.

Unlike Chas I see surf journalism as noble, as spiritual defence against days like these. I aspire to be the very best under-employed ( by choice, motherfucker) surf journalist in the game. It’s hard to come up with the words to summarise the game today.

In the grand scheme it signifies nothing apart from a governing body looking for novelty to energise a stale Aussie leg.

Now go home and get your fucking shine box Sebastien Zietz for dropping that ten as I was about to hit send.

How sick was that? This sport kills me.

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