Filipe Toledo's dazzling frottage rips hole in fabric of universe!
Like the great Camus, and the incomparably great Melville, I’m not a full-time professional (surf) writer.
I’m a working man who has a job (bus driver) and for that I am truly grateful because it’s meant never having had to cup balls or fondle the shafts of the industry or the pro surfers I write about. God knows some surf journalists have fulfilled those job descriptors, literally. I only mention to put the following scene into context.
Halfway between Byron and the Goldy, speeding along the Pacific Motorway in the night, paying passengers, cute couple, she French, he German and maybe a Pommy Australian working in the building industry. J-Bay playing awkwardly loudly through the phone on the car radio.
Jordy vs Staples. Pottz and Turpel on the call.
Staples rides the last wave , needing a four-something and, it’s not enough. A little while later Turpel brings up the ride. What followed was extraordinary, as extraordinary in it’s own way as the shark call. It went like this:
Heavy sigh, dead air. Long dead air. High laugh. Grunt.
Turpel: “Pottz, there’s lots of theories outside the numbers. Maybe Dale didn’t show the judges he wanted it enough.”
Pottz: “Absolutely. His body language was very nonchalant, he was really cruising. I’m not surprised, I think maybe subconsciously maybe he had that Sean Holmes scenario where he didn’t want to upset the World Title Race. Dale and Jordy are super good friends and maybe he didn’t want to get in the way of his World Title Race. Maybe he tapped off.”
Turpel: long silence…
Huh? Say fucking what? He tapped off?
I hit the brakes, pulled the bus over, off the road and pulled out some lined note=paper to write it down, a habit I learned off the New Yorker’s Gay Talese.
Did Pottz just insinuate that a professional athlete threw a heat, tanked? Did he imply that the working gal was robbed of an honest exchange?
From the Australian Institute of Sport: Activities and behaviours that define sport as lacking integrity include: creating an unfair advantage or the manipulation of results through performance enhancing drugs, match fixing or tanking.
I’m not accusing Staples of tanking. But Pottz’s loose lips do bring up a big potential problem for a a sport now in thrall to the easy cash of online gambling. Could there be a sport with more easy potential for tanking and throwing heats to influence results?
Who would know?
The only sure thing has been wherever sports betting has become entrenched in a sport, corruption and match fixing have followed as sure as night follows day.
Ever have a dog day afternoon? I left the wife’s car running in the front yard after my car blew up and a debt collector’s demand notice showed up in the mail. Unpaid tax. Ran inside to check the computer to see if the comp was on and heard a loud bang and the house shook. Car had rolled back, gathered steam and smashed into the house. That, like a spaz pump @ J-Bay, is a bad error for the working man. Real bad. Thus, a mood in need of some serious entertainment descended.
Six heats, including four this evening (Aus time) in perfect J-Bay without a single excellent wave score. The peak moment of entertainment was seeing Kolohe get stuffed in the tub by a boogieboarder down the Impossibles section. There was a request for a re-surf , denied by the commissioner. Great joy to hear Shaun Tomson come out so strongly contra spaz pumps, although he diplomatically referred to them as “rail changes” and called them superfluous.
Finally, the day kicked into gear. Leo Fioravanti and Seabass lit up, braces of eights tossed into the breeze like spin-drift, Seabass should have got a 10. Seabass couldn’t get a back-up, Seabass lost. It broke the ice of a mediocre morning for Toledo.
There was consternation from some commenters that Toledo didn’t get a mention on day one. That’s because I didn’t get to see him surf, probably drinking shots of some foul aniseed liquor, but that mistake won’t be repeated. His flow wasn’t perfect, little twitchy for mine, but the gaffs were real. The tuberiding was sublime, the “speed management” to employ the phrase du jour, was lakka I tune you bru. Judges got the score order wrong: the first wave, given a 9.63, was the Ten. The lady in red look, the bleached blonde; it was like he was channeling his own past master like Kelly. In this case Peter Drouyn around the time of the MR Super Challenge.
I still hold a grudge against Caio Ibelli for beating JJF at Bells and robbing us of a Jordy/JJF final and his low squat style offends my sense of taste, but he swung that board like a club at six-foot J-Bay and beat Stu Kennedy all over the head with it.
Ever wonder how someone achieves excellence, I mean a truly elite performance in an aesthetic endeavour like surfing?
And it is aesthetic.
Judges score it with their eyes. Out of all the ham-fisted efforts at explaining judging the only thing that Richie Porta said that has ever made sense is his statement that judges feel a ten. I think about it all the time. According to peak performance expert Anders Ericsson, just practising, or doing the same thing over and over again (think Malcolm Gladwell’s ten thousand hours) isn’t enough. We just end up seeing the same thing over and over.
Is this not the story of, not just the vast majority of rec surfers, but pro’s as well? Most surf the same all through their career.
I can only think of four great leaps in performance during a career. JJF, with his massive leap forward in carving surfing, ADS with the greatest bottom turn/top turn combination improvement in history, Kelly Slater 2010-13 as he followed through on the Dane Reynolds revolution with huge air rotations at Bells Beach and New York and, finally, Filipe Toledo who added the fastest turn speed and rail-game in the biz onto his aerial attack.
It’s not a question of coaching or technique or equipment, although these are all vital ingredients. It’s primarily a creative act, an effort of imagination.
Too weird, too hippie? I’m just passing on the latest science is all.
Ace and Joan Duru put me to bed. I’m sure if I missed something we’ll get it in the comments. I’ll deal with reality in the morning. It won’t be pretty, but I couldn’t be more cheerful. Sit down bitch, be humble.
Oh yeah, Kelly ….Mistah Kurtz, he dead.
Corona Open J-Bay Round 2 Results:
Heat 1: Jordy Smith (ZAF) 10.67 def. Dale Staples (ZAF) 10.27
Heat 2: Matt Wilkinson (AUS) 13.10 def. Michael February (ZAF) 11.67
Heat 3: Owen Wright (AUS) 12.34 def. Ethan Ewing (AUS) 11.10
Heat 4: Jadson Andre (BRA) 15.80 def. Kolohe Andino (USA) 13.20
Heat 5: Julian Wilson (AUS) 14.27 def. Josh Kerr (AUS) 12.53
Heat 6: Connor O’Leary (AUS) 13.40 def. Miguel Pupo (BRA) 13.10
Heat 7: Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA) 16.63 def. Sebastian Zietz (HAW) 15.76
Heat 8: Filipe Toledo (BRA) 19.63 def. Kanoa Igarashi (USA) 12.83
Heat 9: Caio Ibelli (BRA) 16.43 def. Stuart Kennedy (AUS) 14.80
Heat 10: Joan Duru (FRA) 15.87 def. Adrian Buchan (AUS) 14.00
Heat 11: Ezekiel Lau (HAW) 17.03 def. Wiggolly Dantas (BRA) 16.37
Heat 12: Frederico Morais (PRT) 15.73 def. Ian Gouveia (BRA) 14.00
Corona Open J-Bay Round 3 Match-Ups:
Heat 1: Adriano de Souza (BRA) vs. Joan Duru (FRA)
Heat 2: Gabriel Medina (BRA) vs. Bede Durbidge (AUS)
Heat 3: Owen Wright (AUS) vs. Ezekiel Lau (HAW)
Heat 4: Connor O’Leary (AUS) vs. Frederico Morais (PRT)
Heat 5: Mick Fanning (AUS) vs. Caio Ibelli (BRA)
Heat 6: John John Florence (HAW) vs. Jadson Andre (BRA)
Heat 7: Jordy Smith (ZAF) vs. Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA)
Heat 8: Filipe Toledo (BRA) vs. Kelly Slater (USA)
Heat 9: Julian Wilson (AUS) vs. Jeremy Flores (FRA)
Heat 10: Joel Parkinson (AUS) vs. Conner Coffin (USA)
Heat 11: Michel Bourez (PYF) vs. Italo Ferreira (BRA)
Heat 12: Matt Wilkinson (AUS) vs. Jack Freestone (AUS)
Im not comparing your commentary to elsewhere at all…
As you just said half the business model is being a dick online… so a degree of non “sporting” behaviour is to be excepted, and it is Chas!
but don’t forget if you’re posting here you’re not above it and be prepared to cop it in the end one way or another. You did obviously… and handled it well, reflecting the tone in which it was dished out in.
Ultimately I’m just the conjunct between the readers and the writers. Amongst the humour and the bitchslapping headlines it’s one of the most honest surf publications I’ve encountered.
So with that comes a anonymity waiver in the Beachgrit book.
Yes! I understand both the pimp and whore attributes of this site…
I have no issue with anonymity, but unfortunately what comes from total anonymity is less ideas and more dick swinging and threads of tit for tat name calling.
That’s been played out elsewhere now and on other sites and forums in the past and I don’t want that tone here, because I want people to comment on the fucken surfing! not on fucking each others Mothers…
Oh god, don’t tell me you’re quitting…
Alright Stormboy, my favourite movie, I cry every time I see the baby pelicans, it was fair criticism and I took it on board.
Old blokes? Reminds me of the young bull who turns to the old bull and says, “Let’s sprint down the hill and fuck one of those cows.” The old bull shakes his head and says, “No, let’s stroll down and fuck them all!” Thanks for your concern, we’ll be ok.
Its poor sport to act like a dick online, so I offer no apology for throwing you under Chas’s bus… If you want to stay anonymous online i’d suggest not having your real name as your email.
“I dont give too much of a fuck” {except when I’m giving to much of a fuck…} Anyway, back to Julian & Flores aye?
Rookie email error. Us old cunts aren’t so silly.
hahhaha
One says “Jeez”, another “It’s called writing for your target audience” Suddenly the peanut gallery is charging in? You certainly have a flair for drama. Probably worth noting that you are the only one in this convo throwing insults.
I feel the force of a certain frustrated surf writer very close by
Oh indeed, Chas called him out a few months ago… was very amusing.
He’s quite articulate but so hurt!
Stop cupping Longtoms balls, I thought it was my turn?
Get in line!
Gold coin donation on the way through gents
Payola! You unethical prick!
Calvary or cavalry? Me and Longtom, a two man gang, circle jerking our way to oppress dissenters world wide. Sheesh.
turn the victimhood back to simmer ……it’s just a couple of gentlemen having a civilised conversation…whats the beef?
Jeez…
It’s called writing for your target audience.
don’t worry Stromboy I’ve copped plenty of vitriol and I’m sure there plenty more to come.
Sounds like it hit a sore point….it was a simple set-up comment- one sentence- to deliver context. And I think you spectacularly and wilfully missed the point of it.
Fact is journalists in surf have been and continue to be constrained because of a range of factors from outright conflict of interest commercial arrangements to simple over-chumminess to cowardice….if you read that as an attack on the surf media as a whole or some kind of conspiracy thinking then that probably says more about you than me.
As to the beliefs in rigging, fixing and other “unbelievable horseshit”….it was Pottz own words….I don’t know, maybe you haven’t been keeping up to date with what happens in professional sport?
I think you have a point LT , especially the cowardice part on behalf of so called journalists , which is more about you and not the people who read the articles, wait for it, JOURNrazzi……so when is journalism not journalism?
ignoring the cheap shot, maybe you and I have different ideas about what constitutes crying wolf.
Australias most prolific surf journo through the 80/90’s was a bipolar sexual predator who was never forced to account for what he did, others openly admit to ignoring ……well, we’ve heard it all before eh, nothing to see.
No bitterness……but you can’t blame a gal for bringing it up….unless you have some particular dog in the fight?
Do you think that your 80/90 surf journo , who you have judged to be a bipolar sex predator , and never forced to account for his behaviour , that being driven out of the sport for life was not enough accounting for ?
I don’t know? What would you think if it was one of your kids who ended up on the wrong side of one of his drunken episodes?
Live and let live?
FFS LT , what kids ? Do you mean under over 18 year olds , my kids have been taught how to look after themselves , they are called adults.
Do you have any first hand experience or just recycling old bull shit ?
he certainly has contributed to surfing a lot more than you ever will , has paid the ultimate price in being run out of surfing , and in times gone by , surfers were macho , homophobic , little respect for women , so yeah live and let live!
Fair consequence.
He could come back.
I wonder if that Bi Polar sexual predator would repeatedly call Pyzal a stud and marvel at his buttons being undone? Would he also analyse Dale Staples sex appeal?
Without a doubt. Just not publicly.
No, closeted guilt riddled behaviour, never in jest.
The consistent ball cupping and tiptoeing from within the industry is kinda obvious to those on outside. What doesn’t seem to be so obvious to those working on the inside is how fucking lame their precious little industry looks from the outside, i.e. from the customer’s perspective.
“effort of imagination” well said.. Jesus what a great surf cultural experience to ride your “blue collar” line and listen to you talk surf.
That was a good read!
True dat, we can only hope that Mr. Shearer can maintain this level of performance throughout the contest…..
Shaun Tomson. Ugh.