Portugal: “Gabriel Makes the Dead Rat Dance!”

And if you think Medina can't beat John Florence at Pipe you mad.

Can you cast your mind back to this exact moment last year? Pyzel in tears, global jubilation, the rightful heir claiming the throne. A feast at which “all hearts opened and all wines flowed” etc etc.

Then Pro surfing died. Died like a dead rat. A dead stinking rat that Rory Parker had to then cart around and try and make dance for our amusement at the Pipeline.

Which violates the Golden Rule of surf journalism as told to me by Nick Carroll in 1962: You can’t make a dead rat dance. 

Rory tried but in the effort he self-combusted and deserted his post in the biggest capitulation since the Fall of Mosul.* You are brand new to BeachGrit? Welcome comrade, as you will see sometimes the action behind the curtain rivals that in front.

But no dead rat now. Now we go to the Pipeline with a live title race. Pro surfing breathes a sigh of relief. I desperately wanted to be entertained as the muted violence of a bruised Portugese sky framed a high-energy lineup of rippy close-outs to start the Final Day.

Violent anti-climax followed.

First Julian Wilson flubbed his way to victory against SeaBass in a low-scoring encounter that set the tone.

The battle of the chinbeards followed. Either could have doubled for Scott Weiland pre-heroin. John Florence with a world title in the offing got nothing. Then nothing and more nothing.

Kolohe squeezed out of a frothy pit for a seven. A muted crowd expecting fireworks murmured, an online audience praying for something like Hagler/Hearns round one – please take three minutes and savour what competitive sport can be – got a dull non-event maimed by the most soul-destroying phenomenon in pro surfing: the European closeout.

Florence, the best surfer in the world and current world champion finished the quarter final with a heat score of 3.8. Fanning, a three-time world champion, finished with 3.17 in a losing score to Medina.

Finally, something caught fire. Kolohe and Wilson exchanged tube-rides and aerials, with the judges over-cooking the spread to put the result a bridge too far away for Kolohe.

That keeps Julian in the title race as a rank outsider. Medina brutalised Kanoa Igarashi like a hyena scavenging a carcass on the savannah. It wasn’t pretty. It was pretty dire actually.

But not according to Joey Turpel.

According to Joe, the drama and the action was almost unbearably exciting. It, and some of the judging – Medina got a high six yesterday for a wave I could have easily exceeded, an aged, semi-amateur receding hairline hetero-normative piece of shit bus driver from Lennox Head – seemed to put us deep down the rabbit hole into a wholly separate reality.

Now I know Hunter S Thompson is the most used and abused and badly copied writer in the surf journalist canon* but if we could just bring him on board as expert witness for a moment I would be  very grateful.

In his book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, written about the ’72 American election, he ascribes the weird and savagely surreal behaviour of candidate Ed Muskie to a powerful hallucinogen called Ibogaine. HST colorfully described the effect of the drug on Muskie, “Given the known effects of ibogaine… Muskie’s brain was almost paralyzed by hallucinations… he looked out at the crowd and saw gila monsters instead of people”.

Is Joey Turpel seeing rainbows and spirit animals when he looks at Portugese close-outs, Richie Porta seeing high-sixes for a performance an intermediate could dish up? Has the common frame of reference, the one that enables Pro Surfing to be understood, been lost? Is it now like Wittgenstein’s famous lion, that even if it speaks we cannot understand it?

Has Pro Surfing crossed the Ibogaine threshold? Is Joey Turpel seeing rainbows and spirit animals when he looks at Portugese close-outs, Richie Porta seeing high-sixes for a performance an intermediate could dish up? Has the common frame of reference, the one that enables Pro Surfing to be understood, been lost? Is it now like Wittgenstein’s famous lion, that even if it speaks we cannot understand it?

Thirteen minutes to go in the final and with Medina sitting on a pair of fives and Wilson a pair of ones I’m pining for a Pro Surfing Brexit.

Why can’t we be in the Mentawais or even Bali? Can you tell me John Florence is going to get a three surfing Canggu rights or Macaronis?

Fuck relatable conditions, fuck close-outs,  I want my mind blown. Give me 20 JJF World Titles, give me tea for the Tillerman, steak for the sun, wine for the women who made the rain come.

Fuck relatable conditions, fuck close-outs,  I want my mind blown. Give me 20 JJF World Titles, give me tea for the Tillerman, steak for the sun, wine for the women who made the rain come.

With the rat on life support and Medina falling on nine waves, a sudden burst of action with five minutes to go. Julian threw a tail-high reverse for a high four then speared the only barrel of the final, a running left for a low six to take the lead. Medina responded with a flurry of lefts and the final was won. Medina takes a red hot streak and a hyper live rat ready to dance to the Pipeline.

If you think Medina can’t beat John Florence at Pipe you mad.

*Jokes Rory. You ain’t a real surf writer unless you get sacked by a site or quit in the kind of blazing glory Fante describes in The Road to Los Angeles: “I’m tickled to be leaving. I’m sick of your drooling, elephantine hypocrisy. I’ve been wanting to abandon this preposterous job for a week. So go straight to hell, you dago fraud!”

**Just need to put in the canon the greatest opening line of surf writing ever, published in The Inertia yesterday by writer Shawna Baruh. “This morning I was called a cunt”. Bring it to Pipe Shawna.