Now is the time for us to stand behind the world's
greatest surfer!
Fucking son of a bitch Surfer
magazine. Damned motherfucking piece of shit. And let me catch my
breath……… Ohhhhhh hell. Surfer magazine…. you are a
bastard publication. An unloved asshole. A rim lick. A ball kick.
And I am coming for your ginger-haired Editor-in-Queef Todd
Prodanovich.
I am coming for him hard.
The Inertia‘s Zach Weisberg has been vanquished. Me n
Stab‘s Morgan Williamson are now best pals. It’s only
Todd Prodanovich of Surfer magazine, the backbone-less
wonder. Todd Prodddddanovich of Surfer magazine, the King
of All Chickens.
I know what happened on the North Shore. I know, am coming and
hell (BeachGrit) is coming with me.
In any case, I once wrote a story titled Grace, Kelly for
Surfing magazine but Todd Prodanovich at Surfer
has apparently appropriated the brilliant
header and used it for a Scott Bass piece about
surfing or some shit.
Grace, Kelly was a seminal piece of surf writing because it was
how I met surfing’s grandest poobah of all the one, the only, Matt
Warshaw.
He had penned a story in the New York Times almost 10
years ago about how Kelly Slater should retire. I disagreed in
Surfing.
Now the story is gone, disappeared by that cowardly Todd
Prodanovich, but we (me n Matt) first met in New York at a film
festival. It was the high water mark of my career. We drank beer,
we laughed, we hugged and have been fast friends ever since.
In any other case, I was looking for that story today because
today there is also much chatter that Kelly Slater, with his
broken J-Bay
foot, should retire. I wanted to reference it and
reference Matt Warshaw’s New York Times piece because I
disagree more now than I did then.
Kelly Slater needs to surf until he’s 50 and probably until he’s
60 and maybe until he’s 70. He needs to stick around and not go off
and really get serious about his brand or his boards or his pool.
He needs to stick around and do what he does. Surf
professionally.
Why?
I don’t exactly know for sure but I feel it. I feel that he
should push beyond the Favre absurdity into new realms of
possibility. Oh I don’t think Kelly Slater will ever win another
world title but I think he could compete and be interesting and
surf well for another two decades at least and especially if he
changes his boards.
I think as long as Kelly Slater is surfing professionally then
global warming will stay in check, that Kim Jong Un will not really
be able to develop a nuclear warhead, that the earth will keep
spinning.
Kelly Slater is as essential as chemical bonding.
Do you dare disagree?
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I can only think of four great leaps in performance
during a career. JJF, with his massive leap forwards 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.
J-Bay Analysis: Filipe’s Great Creative
Leap!
By Longtom
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)
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Sexy: Filipe Toledo scores fashion 10!
By Chas Smith
The man from Ipanema and professional surfing's
first ever perfect sartorial heat!
What a day of professional surfing! It
literally had everything and I dare not even touch the action as I
look forward to Steve Shearer’s daily wraps like I look forward to
that first 2 PM cocktail. Crisp, clear, invigorating. Knocking life
straight back into true perspective, or at the very least a more
balance one.
But there is one thing I know he won’t talk about and that is
Filipe Toledo’s J-Bay perfection.
Oh not his 10 point ride, that will be discussed I’m sure, but
his sartorial perfection. The first heat ever given a full fashion
10!
Andy Irons almost got a 10 many years ago for this singlet/trunk
combo…
Through no fault of his own professional surfing was dealing
singlets that looked NASCAR back then and he didn’t quite match his
reds so he got a fashion 9.87.
Yesterday, though, Filipe Toledo went red on red with peroxide
blonde hair and 93 pounds of sartorial boom…
The black kneecaps on his wetsuit set off the white Corona
lettering on his singlet. His hair, black peeking through white.
Peroxided mustache and goatee lending an air of Greek demi-god. The
skin, a nut brown hue also nodding toward Mt. Olympus, pulling the
ensemble together…
I could really go on all day but must retreat to the swimming
pool to celebrate this momentous day because I just got the finest
pair of Etro trunks.
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In pain, or meditating on the perfect Instagram
caption? | Photo: Stab
Breaking: Slater Breaks Foot at J-Bay!
By Michael Ciaramella
Right in the metatarsals!
Oh this surfing, it’s a painful game.
Just yesterday my buddy messaged me, inquiring which orthopedic
specialist I had seen for my ACL/MCL.
Turns out that, while surfing in Puerto Escondido this past
week, he too bent his knee backwards — sending shockwaves up his
spine and a distinct tenderness to his hinge.
“It’s alright,” he assured me. “Now both my knees are evened
out.”
While not quite on the level of skating or motocross, surfing
has a way of putting you on your ass, or head, or… metatarsals.
Just ask the greatest surfer of all time, Kelly Slater, who
hours ago suffered a broken foot while surfing in Jeffrey’s Bay,
South Africa. Let’s read from the Gram:
Sheesh. Six weeks means Teahupo’o and likely Trestles are out of
the cards, which would leave Slater, currently rated eighteenth in
the world, in a very vulnerable position.
Let’s just guesstimate that, by losing third round here and 25th
at both Chopes and Lowers, Kelly would fall somewhere around the
26-mark in the standings.
Do you think he’d be able to crawl out of that hole, with only
France, Portugal, and Pipe remaining in the season? Five years ago,
it’d be without question. You’d have put five grand on Kelly
finalling at Pipe if that’s what he needed to do. He was too good
and too stubborn to lose like that.
But now… who knows?
And isn’t that terrifying!
Like, what if Slater fell off Tour? Sure, he’d almost definitely
be saved by an Injury Wildcard, but the idea of Kelly being carried
along by some technicality hurts my soul.
Before the season started, Kelly stated that this would likely
be his final game of connect-the-same-eleven-dots. But do you
really think he could go out like this?
It feels like he’s waiting for a highlight occasion, his
Freddy P. moment, if you will, to turn his
back on competitive surfing for good. Save a win at Pipe, that
seems improbable in 2017.
So what the hell does he do? Try to scrape his way back into the
Top-22 by year’s end? Or fail to do so and cling to the injury
wildcard, just for another swing at increasingly unlikely success?
Does he drop the game altogether?
The Goat is in a serious hole, with no obvious way out.
I wish him the best with his foot and otherwise.
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Meet: Slater’s “kook and wasted
talent”!
By Derek Rielly
Inspect the Instagram warrior who madly possessed
the world champ!
Three days ago, Kelly Slater applied a wet
napkin to a fellow Instagram warrior who suggested his
boards were hurting his surfing.
Kelly responded: “You’ve literally done and continue to do
nothing worthwhile in your life but be an envious loudmouth. It’s a
feeble attempt for some attention so here ya go.”
and
“You come on here insulting me and attacking other people,
throwing vitriol. Always looking for attention but the wrong kind.
You’re the same guy you’ve always been, that’s the problem. Nobody
said you were scared but nobody is scared of you either. Now move
along.”
Yesterday, Chucky Rigano, whom you might remember when he
smeared Dane Reynolds’ makeup at Sandspit (read, “Barneys act like I spat on
Dane’s baby” here), pointed us to an old Lost
film where Sean delivers a monologue to camera.
“Hi, I’m Sean Volland. I’m a pretty good surfer and a very good
drinker and have fire for breath. I’m gonna send my portfolio to
Marlboro and say, look, dude, I smoke menthols. I smoke lights.
I’ll smoke Reds. I’ll smoke the butts out of the ashtray in the
morning and drink warm beer so ytou guys should hook me up – 100
grand a year, a business account all the Marlboro gear, a company
gold card, company ride. Send me to Kirra, dude, I’ll smoke cigs in
the tbe backside while cutting rabbit off – I’m serious, I’m not
even kidding…”
Where is he now? Dying of lupus! Says he wants to die surfing
big Teahupoo!
Mr Volland enters at four minutes and fifty seconds!
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Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by
@theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros