Professional surfing is back with surprising highs and unsurprising lows!
What do you believe in my friends? Existentially. God? Dead.
Sure, it’s taking a while to bury the body but deady bones. The Ocean? Even though the transcendent Steph Gilmore told us the ocean is magnetic, now we know the Not-Ocean is the future.She said so. Liberalism, humanism, secularism, communism, feminism blah blah? All about to be crushed under the heel of techno-utopianism and algorithms. It’s a done deal, shipmates.
The cruellest shattering of illusion? Now we can’t even believe in the perfectly meaningless entertainment of watching fit young(ish) men and gals gyrating on waves for our pleasure. Head judge Richie Porte has confirmed that the magnificent broadcast from the WSL (Speakers’ enduring and crowning achievement), all those glorious slo-mo’s and different angles, are nothing more than illusions offering unreliable testimony with no relation to actual reality. He said so.
What the fuck is real now that Pro Surfing has declared war on reality? Sharks? Opioids? Waitresses?
You know the sound of gallic indifference? A shrug of the shoulders and the deflating tyre through pursed lips: pfffftttt. That was the first four heats of the Quik Pro France held in new swell on a gloomy Atlantic as wobbly as fresh set gelatine.
Enter Italo Ferreira, with the charisma and machismo of an Australian fast bowler on a 70’s tour of the West Indies. He threw ham on a rye baguette at the French sky on his opening wave, a huge rotation landed clean as a whistle to underscore his critical underdog status for CT 2017. Not just criminally underscored at crucial junctures but misunderstood, by Pottz in particular. Martin thinks he sees something but sees nothing more than his own misperceptions when it comes to Italo.
John Florence answers back with a straight air sticking a thorny landing and using what he termed “composure” to start hacking away at clean french walls to overtake Italo. Two thoughts: 1. Thanks be to Allah that accidental champion Keanu Asing didn’t upset Florence again and 2. there will only be one true and unassailable travesty come the ASP banquet at Turtle Bay this year, and it won’t be Kelly Slater’s dress sense. It’ll be someone other than John John Florence hoisting the World Title trophy skywards. I will lose my composure if that happens.
I tend to think of the European leg as the hardest slog for spectating, with the French myth in particular as one of the worst oversold hype jobs in the surf world. More often than not it’s brutal closeouts and low percentage dross winning heats. Not today. By Jordy’s heat the sun was shining, spray rainbowing seaward of groomed walls….buttery. Dreamy. Jordy put his body into it like a springbok flanker, translating body mass into displaced water, for a convincing win.
Everyone has their weaknesses. Big Jordy’s is heavy water, Gabriel Medina has sleepy starts to the season and a fiery temper that throws him off balance. Mine is waitresses. I’d swap all the qat in Yemen for a sharp tongued , snaggle toothed waitress with a well thumbed copy of Simone De Beauvoir in a rucksack who looks like she’d been messing where she shouldn’t be messing. French or Southern Californian. Oh I’m only speaking theoretical, friends. I have my gal and my keikis and I wouldn’t risk that love for all the waitresses in the world. That is one thing I share with Joel Parkinson. We keep tight with our fams.
Parko has gone greybeard but he still laid down the smoothest, most classical arcs. Diary of the working man as artist, the Joel Parkinson Documentary will be ready for theatrical release Fall 2019. Investors welcome. In the interim, he proceeds.
Rewinding, Gabe Medina applied lethal force to sculpted french beachbreaks, very much underscored on a final wave that didn’t affect the result to escort Leo Fioravanti and Jeremy Flores to round two. Toledo shuffled off after an indifferent heat in pain with a hip/rib injury that spells the end of his Title aspirations.
Seabass got shacked in the shorebreak, Ian Gouveia plugged away and Ace surfed better than Kolohe and Zeke in a thirty minute period in the south of France. The Lofty Backhand Float was the manoeuvre du jour.
Twelve heats and not one mention of The People. The Outsider has become the most coveted position in surf writing, in fact the default position – Je suis L’Etranger – a stance I look upon with wry amusement. Sure, it’s not just surfing and surf writing, Trump took the Whitehouse playing it. The cultural takeover was complete when Joey Turpel referred to a non-descript ride from Connor O’Leary as a “working man’s wave”. Ladies and gentlemen, our work is done. Whats happening with the WSL/media boycott? I never got the memo. (Ed’s note: It is on for the final’s day unless otherwise noted.)
Ps: Rnd two. Marc Lacomare chokes out a listless Julian Wilson.
Owen Wright knocks out the last year’s winner Keanu Asing. I am relieved. Not because I have anything against Asing. It’s just one less honest meat and potato slugger to knock out John Florence. I’m a traitor to the people because I loathe the honest slugger.
Fade to unconsciousness.
Quiksilver Pro France Round 1 Results:
Heat 1: Stuart Kennedy (AUS) 12.00, Adriano de Souza (BRA) 10.77, Conner Coffin (USA) 6.33
Heat 2: Nat Young (USA) 11.00, Bede Durbidge (AUS) 9.17, Owen Wright (AUS) 7.20
Heat 3: Matt Wilkinson (AUS) 13.77, Wiggolly Dantas (BRA) 12.50, Josh Kerr (AUS) 10.76
Heat 4: Ethan Ewing (AUS) 15.57, Caio Ibelli (BRA) 15.33, Julian Wilson (AUS) 9.13
Heat 5: John John Florence (HAW) 15.67, Italo Ferreira (BRA) 15.60, Keanu Asing (HAW) 5.10
Heat 6: Jordy Smith (ZAF) 16.10, Marc Lacomare (FRA) 12.70, Kanoa Igarashi (USA) 10.47
Heat 7: Joan Duru (FRA) 18.00, Filipe Toledo (BRA) 11.43, Miguel Pupo (BRA) 9.14
Heat 8: Gabriel Medina (BRA) 15.86, Jeremy Flores (FRA) 15.27, Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA) 13.26
Heat 9: Joel Parkinson (AUS) 13.20, Jack Freestone (AUS) 11.96, Michel Bourez (PYF) 11.40
Heat 10: Sebastian Zietz (HAW) 12.74, Jadson Andre (BRA) 10.74, Connor O’Leary (AUS) 10.57
Heat 11: Ian Gouveia (BRA) 15.57, Mick Fanning (AUS) 15.27, Frederico Morais (PRT) 12.16
Heat 12: Adrian Buchan (AUS) 15.60, Kolohe Andino (USA) 10.63, Ezekiel Lau (HAW) 10.60
Quiksilver Pro France Round 2 Results:
Heat 1: Marc Lacomare (FRA) 13.27 def. Julian Wilson (AUS) 12.23
Heat 2: Owen Wright (AUS) 13.60 def. Keanu Asing (HAW) 11.17
Heat 3: Adriano de Souza (BRA) 15.97 def. Josh Kerr (AUS) 13.00
Heat 4: Miguel Pupo (BRA) 12.27 def. Filipe Toledo (BRA) 8.50
Heat 5: Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA) 14.60 def. Connor O’Leary (AUS) 11.87
Heat 6: Frederico Morais (PRT) 15.26 def. Jack Freestone (AUS) 11.37
Heat 7: Kolohe Andino (USA) 13.50 def. Jadson Andre (BRA) 12.60
Heat 8: Mick Fanning (AUS) 13.20 def. Ezekiel Lau (HAW) 12.84
Remaining Quiksilver Pro France Round 2 Match-Ups:
Heat 9: Michel Bourez (PYF) vs. Kanoa Igarashi (USA)
Heat 10: Jeremy Flores (FRA) vs. Italo Ferreira (BRA)
Heat 11: Conner Coffin (USA) vs.Caio Ibelli (BRA)
Heat 12: Bede Durbidge (AUS) vs. Wiggolly Dantas (BRA)
Commented on Disqus? Log out, tap the Disqus button, and your old name and comments come back. The box is ours.
Your comments are still here. Every one of them.
Twelve years of BeachGrit comments came across from Disqus. Connect and we will show you how many are yours. We get your username, nothing else.
Connect Disqus to reveal.
oh btw the WSL banquet thingy will be on the Goldie, weekend of March 9 2018.
Superb offering my dear Longtom..
There’s nothing rye about a french baguette monsieur
I know, i just wanted to say ham on rye.
A Dylanesque waitress, Whose hair was still red
…”She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe
“I thought you’d never say hello” she said
“You look like the silent type”
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century”.
That board deserved to be punched, in my humble opinion.
I wonder what Blasphemy Rottmouth and his little sidekick would make of your outsider status now Longtom?
I loathe statisticians. Well no I don’t loathe them, I dislike stats though. Beachgrit’s statsy guy said Miggy Pupes couldn’t win a heat and Filipe was going a fairly long way. Guess what, Miggy Pupes beat Filipe in round two. Stats don’t tell you what will happen. They don’t know about injuries, about that day’s board selection, about conditions, and they don’t take into account the complete unpickability of French beachies. This is the hardest event on tour to predict. And yeah, if it costs Johnny somehow, it can fuck right off into the doom of the WSL’s new technophilic future.
I caught a couple heats this morning west coast and I don’t remember anything about the scoring or whatever, but holy shit it was beautiful.
Since drug testing became so intrusive, I only compete against myself. This assures a level playing field for all involved.
come off it buddy, you wouldn’t know a good pair of sluggos if they reared up and bit you on the penis.
I started taking drugs so I had an excuse for everything in life. Including my confusion on whether the skinny side of the sluggo slipped between my balls or my arse cheeks. It all started when I first saw a surfboat oarsman on Wide World of Sports…
Where are you? I’m on my way!
I it safe to assume that Italo’s 9.5 is the new 10?
No. Shodda been a 9
Think so? He got some serious height and stuck the shit out of the landing.
I thought John won the heat, easily. Italo’s last wave was over-scored for me and all of the other scores were exactly as I called them. Italo’s air was at the end of the wave, where it was quite flat. It wasn’t a 10.0.
Oh…I agree…John won the heat (I still say that John’s turn are at least 20% better than anyone else right now) but I do think that Italo’s air was the best single maneuver.
All the qat in Yemen wouldn’t be able to buy you Shelly Johnson.
After driving 1222km yesterday dodging goannas, feral goats, sheep, emus and roos in western NSW – only to destroy left front end of car in unavoidable roo mishap – this was a fucking great read!! Will go back and watch analyser with new eyes.
Jesus, a roo took out my car too, just out of Goulburn after a late-season snow run. Still in the shop after five weeks.
It’s like deer, here in the SC Mountains. Sad and frustrating.
Both delicious in roadkill ragu!
“You pot smoking hoodlums get off my property and turn down that damn Ragu music…I’m getting high just listening to it!”
I managed to get a hire van today so not all bad – back on road!! I was seconds away from through window stuff anyway could be worse. Just hope not 5 weeks!!
Ya can’t hit a roo walk’n.
A Frenchman once screamed,”Fuck off” into my ear as I stepped onto the sand near Hossegor. Bizarrely, I later had a beer with him at that surf bar abomination in Biarritz with the excellent Creme Brûlée. Turns out he spent 12 months living on the Gold Coast and learned his manners duking it out with all those rude cunts.
Speaking of the pfffft of deflating tyres – there’s a bit of that going around at the moment. Best to stick French plates on your panamera if you’re visiting.
me love you longtom. you make wave dancing sound so lovely.
I honestly forgot Joel Parkinson existed until I read this
Is that the jiu jitsu guy?
Yes it is, Kelly.
Now SHUT UP!
How dare you.
Love him, just forgot all about him
It’s amazing that smooth arcs are still relevant in 2017. It’s almost like they feel sorry for the old guys who have zero flare.
Ah 70’s cricket . Ashes to ashes dust to dust , If Lillie don’t get em Thomo must !Almost as exciting as dating young French waitresses.
Julian’s safe word is pineapple juice
Albert Camus might work as a better safe work
That’s ABSURD
Ha!!!!! Nice ….
Riveting read. Makes the WSL Day Replay tolerable now! What a working man’s way to watch pro surfing. Step one: go to WSL site and see results. Step two: read Longtom article on Beach Grit. Step three: Watch Day Replay in the background while at work.
That’s pretty much it