Maddo: Shoulder-Hopping Champ!

It's official! Gary Linden wins the Blood Feud!

There I was, sifting through the internet’s jumbled ball of content in search of whatever cool/funny/important snippet I could deliver to the Grit. After an hour of disappointing videos and blasé news pieces, I was close to giving up. Then it found me.

Somehow this little jewel has escaped the wider surfing community for an entire week. Today, I can say with complete certainty, I’ve found the absolute best thing on the web. Please enjoy Robbie Maddison’s Pipe Dream 2.

Where oh where do I begin? How about some Robbie quotes:

“I knew that if I was gonna do Pipe Dream 2 I’d have to push the limits even further.”

Soooo you went from Teahupo’o, a world-class wave barreling over shallow and sharp reef, to a six-foot day at Todos Santos, a relatively soft and exceptional deep “big wave” location? Makes sense!

“The drive behind setting a world record in the distance ride was because a young kid from Montana saw Pipe Dream 1 and built himself a bike that went on the water and set a record at seventeen miles. A few days after breaking the record he drowned riding his bike, so I wanted to do something to honor him. To shine a light on what he achieved.”

I’m not gonna be the guy who claims Maddison is at all responsible for Blake Becker’s death. That would be cruel and unusual. But I simply cannot pass on the concept that Maddison thinks he is honoring Becker by breaking his world record. You’re “shining a light on what he achieved” by stealing the young man’s place in history? Is this some sort of trickle-down lighting principle?  

(Post wave ride) “That was so gnarly dude I was like braaap braaaap braaap”

Hahaahaahaahahaahahaahahaahahahaaha

Oh. My. God. Was his “ride” not the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen? Five seconds of shoulder-hopping, and half of it slow-moed, which means in reality it was a three-second performance. Come to think of it, shoulder-hopping is too generous. The man was in the channel while a non-breaking swell lurched at a 30-degree angle behind him.

And, no Gary Linden? What happened to Maddo’s promise of, “We filmed the entire encounter so we will show it raw for all to make their own call”? That incident is maybe the only thing that could have saved this hundred-fifty-thousand dollar dud.

Or a total success, if you consider it a comedy piece.

Braaaap!