It has been a year or such since the
announcement that surfing will be included in the 2020 Tokyo
Olympics and we’ve all had time to digest. While I have gone on
record to point out that surfing in the Olympics will be “stupid,” I am
quietly intrigued by various storylines.
Like… the nationalist fires that will begin to burn. Maybe? I
mean, I can’t imagine caring if an American wins and I can’t
imagine you caring if an Australian wins but for sure all of Brazil
will care if a Brazilian wins. They will care to the point of
becoming super annoying thus pushing Americans and Australians into
naturally xenophobic positions which could easily be mistaken as
broadly racist positions. Will surfing then become the favorite
sport of the alt-right? Will BeachGrit do a deal with
Breitbart? I told you. Intriguing.
Also… coaching. Bede “The White Fijian” Durbidge has already
been tapped to lead Australia’s contingent but today Mick Fanning
raised his hand and asked for an assistantship. Let’s read olympics.com!
Back to the sport he has served with such distinction for
the past 14 years. Fanning was over the moon when he heard that
surfing will be on the programme in Tokyo in 2020.
“I’m a big sports fan and I always enjoy watching the
Olympics so I can’t wait to see what kind of performances and
pressure we see with medals up for grabs,” said the man who was
champion surfer in 2007, 2009 and 2013.
At 36 and currently sitting outside the top 10 of the WSL
Tour ranking, Fanning is not certain of exactly how he wants to be
involved, he just knows he has to be there.
“I guess I wouldn’t completely rule it out (competing in
2020) but there’s so much talent coming through the ranks at the
moment and my guess is that by 2020 there will be better prospects
for medals for Australia,” he said. “If that’s the case I’d love to
assist an Aussie team in a coaching role.”
Now that is a super coaching duo. Bede n Mick. I totally bet
Joel comes on too and they all aggressively drink Balter in between
heats.
But who do you think will coach the U.S. team? I’m putting my
money on Brett Simpson. I think he would do well. And I think he
will tap Taylor “Cap’n America” Knox for his number two.
And Brazil? I’m going with the surprise announcement of
player/coach Neco Padaratz with the surprise selection of Sunny
Garcia as his second.
Who will coach Team France?
What about Team Portugal?
What about Team Hawaii?
Very intriguing.
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Biolos: “Wavepools Like Surfing
J-Bay!”
By Derek Rielly
Progression is going to come "shockingly fast" says
shaper to the stars.
To all you gloom buffs who don’t like pools.
They’re coming and ain’t a damn thing y’gonna do about it.
And when they do come, you’ll want a board that fits whatever
pool you’re swishing around in.
And Matt Biolos aka Mayhem, the San Clemente-based shaper to the
stars and owner of Lost Surfboards, has ridden the original
Wavegarden in the Basque country (hint to visitors to that swathe
of land that south of Biarritz and around looping around Bilbao:
don’t call it Spain), their new version called Cove, twice, with
all its different wave settings and the Wavegarden in Texas. And
he’s had feedback from his teamriders Kolohe Andino and Carissa
Moore on the Slater pool.
He knows what works.
In between watching his gal Carissa own the Roxy event in
France, Biolos whispered a few secrets about boards in pools.
BeachGrit: You’ve surfed Wavegarden #1 and #2, the
fabulous Cove. So tell me, what did riding those joints tell you
about board design?
Biolos: My personal opinion is that wavepools are like natural
waves. Each one is its own animal and each one benefits from
different tweaks in boards. No different to the idea that Snapper
and Bells or Pipe and Sunset lend themselves to different boards.
The Cove is short and punchy with quick transitions. It likes a
little bit of rocker and epoxy seems really good there. You don’t
need a lot of momentum. It’s more about quickness. The original,
Wavegarden, N-Land, are more momentum and inertia-based waves –
long rollers where flat rockers tend to keep you going better and
stay in the wave better when coming off the top. We took Jett
Schilling, Eli Hanneman and Eric Geiselman to N-Land. Jett had
a lowish-rockered Driver that
just looked like on an invisible underwater track. Eli had a rockered-out
Whiplash and that looked twitchy and over sensitive. A
little PU weight helps as well. Like when surfing mushy offshore
waves. That said, I think
a low-rocker epoxy ( like a RNF in carbon wrap)
works great at N-Land. My GM, Ben Kelly, was ripping on one there.
So, really, you’re not designing boards for pools so much as boards
for specific pools. Just like natural waves.
BeachGrit: For your top-shelf rider, how’s the board
going to differ if he’s in a contest in Lemoore compared to, say,
Snapper?
Biolos: Well, Carissa won The Test. She said she was perfectly
stoked on her normal board. But looking at the footage, I think her
board could have had a bit more drive and resistance under the rear
foot during her full-rail turns. A little more momentum and
stiffness. But I think I know exactly what to do after watching the
clips. Next time she will have a couple of specific boards. I
did not get to have a guy in the comp but Kolohe went a
week or so before – a consolation prize? – and felt his super
grovel boards worked best. Flat rockers for momentum but short to
fit into the on again/off again tight and kinky transitions. I saw
a wave of him on the left that was more impressive than any
complete waves I saw from the comp footage.
BeachGrit: Do you see tanks as great testing machines?
For fins, designs, or are they, necessarily, specific, and whatever
you learn about design in a pool doesn’t necessarily translate to
the ocean?
Biolos: I know the relentless repetition will advance design
quickly but how those quick advancements directed at specific waves
translates to varied ocean waves remains to be seen. That said, one
afternoon at Cove last week allowed Kolohe, Carissa, Griffin and
grom Winter Vincent, and me, to quickly ride close to 50 waves
each. Once your over the novelty and laughing and playing, you
could easily get a lot of work done testing boards and fins.
Progress will happen shockingly fast. Like all these soccer parents
teaching eight year olds to do technical airs in giant halfpipes on
snowboards and skateboards. The static playing field will drive
radically fast progression. This is an undeniable fact. How that
relates to eight-foot Sunset Beach, Teahupoo or or Pipeline is
another story.
BeachGrit: And, tell me, as an every man, or better than
every man, describe your wavepool experiences. Fabulous beyond
belief?
Biolos: Harder than you think. I would say the same thing
when describing Surfing at J-Bay. “Easy to surf / Hard to surf
well.”
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Success: Surf media’s WSL boycott!
By Chas Smith
Cracks are forming in the WSL's wall of
oppression!
I have had a number of important jobs in my
life (submarine driver, zipline operator) but none more satisfying
than the Voice of the People. None more important. For where would
you be without? If you were mute? I will tell you where. Trodden
under the World Surf League’s authoritarian foot. Forced to endure
a khaki-hued professional surf world with Ross William’s new
slow-motion 1000 yard stare the most exciting bit of
commentary.
I treat the responsibility bestowed up me with the upmost
gravitas.
I also know how the great James Hoffa feels for, if you recall,
I was forced to unionize surf
media as a response to unilateral WSL exclusivizing.
Turning our egalitarian spirit into a place where the 1% hide
behind a wall and feast upon Michelob Ultra, mocking those outside.
I was forced to threaten a boycott of the finals of the France
Pro.
Well, I can report great success. While I was busily working the
phones, barking at heads of the World Surf League in order to
improve the people’s position, Longtom was undermining their
product by detailing the very core of the League’s problem.
“The problem: too safe surfing when big numbers were needed….”
he wrote “And
that is a structural problem for both. Becoming so used to
conservative surfing they lack the neuro-muscular circuitry and
psychological toughness to go big.”
Brilliant.
Stab, meanwhile, was holding the line on the boycott,
refusing to publish anything about the finals because they couldn’t get
Longtom to write their coverage. And Surfline
put out fake fake news
about Kelly Slater not surfing in Portugal, which he is.
When the day ended, I sat back, smiling, and sipped a humble
Stolichnaya and pamplemousse. I could feel the cracks in the WSL’s
wall of oppression. The people are on the march. The people are
coming.
Yes, this is the most important job in my life and the most
satisfying.
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Just in: Stab rebrands as BeachGrit!
By Chas Smith
Venice Beach's leading surf mag hops time machine
to 2015!
It was the greatest day in modern surf
journalism history when Stab bought itself back from
SurfStitch just weeks ago. Didn’t you think? Gone was the tyranny
of bad advertorial. Of forced FCS fin champion stories and
embarrassing spiels about “liquidity events.”
But how was this new entity going to position itself in the
crowded surf landscape? Surf journalism was not the same place it
was when Stab became Australia’s leading online surfwear
retailer’s leading online magazine.
The answer revealed itself today. It is going to position itself
exactly like your li’l old BeachGrit from two years
ago!
The tides have been turning that way for quite some time with
BeachGrit luminary after BeachGrit luminary
finding a soft landing near Venice Beach, California. Today another
penned his maiden
piece.
Ladies and gentleman may I reintroduce… Rory Parker!
Yes that Rory Parker!
Are you thrilled to have him back (and by “back” I mean not
writing for The Inertia)? I am. BeachGrit
’15 had such promise until that dastardly Cori Schumacher showed
up. And until Rory went to the North Shore and…
I suppose it is poetic that Rory’s maiden piece for
Stab is also about the North Shore. A place he… is totally
not afraid of.
But who do you think Stab is going to hire next? Derek
and I are the only two left.
Derek? Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Aggressive: “Gabriel Medina wins Quik
Pro!”
By Longtom
With an eye-popping inevitability!
Nervous moments, as Pottz would say, when you
hit send at three am in a stupor and wake in fright nek day
wondering what the fuck that was all about.
Did I miss something? Over-egg the omelette, insult a
powerful ally, send a steaming pile into cyber-space?
One concept that was sent out under-cooked is the continuing
chokes from Jordy and Julian. Nick Carroll will bust a hemorrhoid
reading this but I was struck, in both pressers, by the
tone.
It was as if they had been body-snatched by zombie therapy bots.
They were both uncomprehending but self-satisfied at the same time.
Rationalisations, lack of insight. The problem: too safe surfing
when big numbers were needed. And that is a structural problem for
both. Becoming so used to conservative surfing they lack the
neuro-muscular circuitry and psychological toughness to go big.
It was as if Jordy and Julian had been body-snatched by zombie
therapy bots. They were both uncomprehending but self-satisfied at
the same time. Rationalisations, lack of insight. The problem: too
safe surfing when big numbers were needed.
The first problem I call the technique or hard problem, the
actual surfing manoeuvres needed. The second is the mind or “soft”
problem. Without a lock on both the Title choke is inevitable.
You disagree Team Julian? Then demolish the theory.
One man without a soft problem is Mick Fanning. Best mind game
in the biz and now a willingness to deal with the hard problem and
expand technique. One air yesterday, cute but legit then a tail
high throw today against Joan Duru in round five. He didn’t need
it. Short-arc power carving got the job done but the intent was
clear.
The day kicked off in two-foot closeouts, a move that infuriated
Owen Wright. Beaten by the luck that flowed to Seabass and not much
more.
Fanning brought, by far, the sharpest knife to the round five
draw with Parko and Kolohe finding wins. The first by huge first
turns, the second by repertoire.
Jed Smith called me a veteran surf writer and I guess if you
count a couple of decades of under-employment and fringe dwelling
as a career that’s true.
But I’ve never been, like Carroll or Doherty, a true believer in
the pro surfing project. I love its stupidity, it’s vacuity, its
epic convulsions and compulsive tilting at a mainstream audience
that seems to retreat, always tantalisingly just out of reach, into
the near distance. The actual product, the surfing itself, is
almost always the least interesting thing. To me anyhow.
I love pro surfing’s stupidity, its vacuity, its epic
convulsions and compulsive tilting at a mainstream audience that
seems to retreat, always tantalisingly just out of reach, into the
near distance.
But if I squint my eyes into the french sunshine with Fanning
and Florence heading out into headhigh beachbreaks I can feel
somewhere the stirrings of how it must feel to be a true believer.
Florence is not a man with a weak grip on either the hard or soft
problem. He fixed the technical deficiencies in his surfing, the
slightly gammy cutback, the weird arms, and reinforced the hi-fi
strengths. And sorted out the mind game.
He prowled the lineup with Fanning, sometimes paddling
cheek-to-cheek, other times paddling in opposite directions to
different parts of the bank. It was a relentless continuation of
what he brought to the game yesterday. Upping the ante. He dropped
it on Fanning and Mick had no answer.
I called the judges counter-revolutionary scum yesterday for not
dishing out a 10 for John’s lofted backside rotation but on
reflection maybe we should be praising their restraint.
I called the judges counter-revolutionary scum yesterday for not
dishing out a 10 for John’s lofted backside rotation but on
reflection maybe we should be praising their restraint. Just a
weird irony that the man who seems to be most often subjected to a
rational restrained judging panel is most deserving of being on the
end of the kind of judging exuberance that saw it raining 10’s in
J-Bay.
As happened to Fanning, so too for Parkinson, with feeling. Gabe
Medina turned him into a spectator. Sitting out the back looking
shoreward anxiously as Medina spiked the sky with a clean oop.
You don’t do Pro Surfing to feel good about yourself. It’s not
therapy. You do it to win. Which is why I like watching Gabe Medina
do pro surfing. When those black eyes start glittering with
malicious intent and he’s up in someone’s grill I’m glued to the
screen. He reminds me of the anecdote told by one of Richard
Nixon’s secret service agents who came upon his boss punching the
chair on an Airforce One flight. “Gotta be tougher, gotta be
tougher.”
The Medina /JJF semi-final started with a long waveless period.
Both surfers stalking the lineup. With a minute to go before a
fresh clock John broke for a small right. It was to be the fateful
decision of the heat. He fell on an air, landing hard in the flats.
Then fell again doing a regulation Oop after a small but defined
tube. Both mistakes compounded in the back half of a now truncated
heat as Medina capitalised, first with a powerhouse display of
backside hooks then a semi-botched big spin that nonetheless put
John in a combination. Relentless strength.
John didn’t crumble. The soft problem solved he backed himself
and nailed the best wave of the heat for a nine but the earlier
mistakes robbed him of what he needed most; time and it was Medina
through.
There’s a documentary film doing the rounds on Netflix right now
called Generation Iron 2. Bulging muscles
ain’t my kink but the film was instructive, in terms of it’s
analysis of how bodybuilding had made a big play to make it as a
mainstream sport on the back of superstars like Arnie
Schwarzenegger. One of the kingpins came on and delivered his
conclusion that they hadn’t made the mainstream, that bodybuilding
was a niche activity. It is what is and we all have to learn to
live with it.
How long until Pro Surfing has a similar Come to Jesus moment?
When the True Believers realise it’s a mid-tier niche sport that
even lifelong surfers ignore, barely tolerate or openly
despise?
I don’t see that moment happening any time soon. As Israeli
historian Yuval Harari noted we are sustained by our fictions. They
bind us together, help us and nothing helps bind together the true
believers of Pro Surfing more than the fantasy of mainstream
acceptance.
The final was an anti-climax. Medina’s win had an air of
inevitability and Seabass couldn’t get started. The Final Horn
sounded and Charlie ran into the shorebreak to chair his stepson up
the beach, through the throng of an adoring crowd.
It was a gnarly contest and to quote the Austrian Oak, we’ll be
back. Thank you and goodnight.
Quiksilver Pro France Final Results:
1: Gabriel Medina (BRA) 16.00
2: Sebastian Zietz (HAW) 9.30
Quiksilver Pro France Semifinal Results:
SF 1: Sebastian Zietz (HAW) 16.26 def. Kolohe Andino (USA)
14.00
SF 2: Gabriel Medina (BRA) 16.40 def. John John Florence (HAW)
16.00
Quiksilver Pro France Quarterfinal Results:
QF 1: Sebastian Zietz (HAW) 15.93 def. Miguel Pupo (BRA) 14.10
QF 2: Kolohe Andino (USA) 11.60 def. Marc Lacomare (FRA) 6.10
QF 3: John John Florence (HAW) 19.67 def. Mick Fanning (AUS)
10.67
QF 4: Gabriel Medina (BRA) 15.20 def. Joel Parkinson (AUS) 1.20
Quiksilver Pro France Round 5 Results:
Heat 1: Sebastian Zietz (HAW) 14.40 def. Owen Wright (AUS)
11.73
Heat 2: Kolohe Andino (USA) 14.94 def. Caio Ibelli (BRA) 11.96
Heat 3: Mick Fanning (AUS) 15.70 def. Joan Duru (FRA) 13.37
Heat 4: Joel Parkinson (AUS) 14.03 def. Nat Young (USA) 10.24
2017 WSL Men’s Jeep Leaderboard (After Quiksilver Pro
France):
1 – John John Florence (HAW) 49,900 pts
2 – Jordy Smith (ZAF) 47,600 pts
3 – Gabriel Medina (BRA) 40,750 pts
4 – Owen Wright (AUS) 39,850 pts
5 – Matt Wilkinson (AUS) 38,200 pts
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by
@theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros