Ten gees and you're in the pool for an hour (four, five
waves), with land and water video-stills angles!
Open: $9788 to Ride Surf Ranch for 1
hour!
By Derek Rielly
Tickets for Founders Cup released including
ultra-VIP, ride-the-pool package…
A few minutes ago, the WSL released tickets for its
Founders Cup team event at the Surf Ranch on the weekend
of May 5 and 6.
A hundred and five bucks will get you through the big cedar
doors for one day ($86.20 for kids under ten), $157.27 for the
weekend ($127.40 for kids) and a VIP all-weekend ticket is $517.77.
The VIP ticket grants its holder “VIP seating” for both days,
access to a lounge, food and booze and a parking pass.
Oh but that ain’t it.
The ticket you’ll be dressing up in your tightest leather
mini-skirt, sequinned silver halter and precarious heels and
throwing fat wads of cash at is The Surf Ranch
Experience™. It costs $9500 (plus the $288 booking fee) and
“after an entire weekend of watching perfect waves, you’ll get your
chance to join the very short list of people who have surfed
Kelly’s creation. The Surf Ranch Experience™ provides a
one-hour surf session in the pool on Monday, May 7. You’ll feel
like the pro’s you just spent a weekend watching, with a
personalised locker, coaching and professional photography and
videography from both land and water. The experience includes full
VIP treatment through the event complete with VIP seating, lounge
access, free food and beverage, premium gift bag, parking pass, and
Tachi Palace hotel room for Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. In
addition, you’ll get an exclusive invite to the pre-event party and
dinner on Friday, and the invite-only concert afterparty on
Saturday. Get ready for the experience of a lifetime. Questions
about this package? [email protected].”
I hardly have to ask.
But, are you in?
Oh, and the teams, if you’re wondering:
AUSTRALIA TEAM:
Captain: Stephanie Gilmore (AUS)
Mick Fanning (AUS)
Matt Wilkinson (AUS)
Julian Wilson (AUS)
Tyler Wright (AUS)
BRAZIL TEAM:
Captain: Gabriel Medina (BRA)
Adriano de Souza (BRA)
Filipe Toledo (BRA)
Silvana Lima (BRA)
Taina Hinckel (BRA)
EUROPE TEAM:
Captain: Johanne Defay (FRA)
Jeremy Flores (FRA)
Frederico Morais (PRT)
Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA)
Frankie Harrer (DEU)
USA TEAM:
Captain: Kelly Slater (USA)
John John Florence (USA)
Kolohe Andino (USA)
Carissa Moore (USA)
Courtney Conlogue (USA)
WORLD TEAM:
Captain: Jordy Smith (ZAF)
Michel Bourez (PYF)
Kanoa Igarashi (JPN)
Paige Hareb (NZL)
Bianca Buitendag (ZAF)
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Science: Navy to study benefits of
surfing!
By Chas Smith
Does surfing offer great promise as therapy?
We have spent some time here discussing
surfing’s metaphysical benefits and believe our conclusions are
mostly agnostic. Right? Like, surfing can make you happy but it can
also make you angry. That whatever mystical communion happens on
the water is mostly a reflection of the micro-dosed LSD and not
coming from surfing itself. Right?
Well, the United States Navy thinks otherwise. Or possibly
thinks otherwise. For The Washington Post reported over
the weekend:
In song and prose, surfing has long been celebrated as a way
to soothe the mind and invigorate the body. But scientific evidence
has been limited. Now the Navy has embarked on a $1 million
research project to determine whether surfing has therapeutic
value, especially for military personnel with post-traumatic stress
disorder, depression or sleep problems. Researchers say surfing
offers great promise as therapy. It is a challenging exercise in an
outdoor environment; people surf individually or in groups;
military surfers who are reluctant to attend traditional group
therapy open up about their common experiences when talking to
other surfers on the beach.
Hmmmmm. All fine and good, of course, but what if a Navy man
paddles out with his post-traumatic stress disorder at, say,
crowded Lowers and gets dropped in on, yelled at, burned, yelled at
some more? I would imagine surfing would not be helpful here but I
suppose that is what the million dollars will pinpoint.
Which lineup on earth do you think is most PTSD inducing?
a) Pipeline
b) Snapper
c) Lowers
d) Mundaka
e) Silver Strand
f) other
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Lake Peterson blew my mind with speed, aggression,
repertoire and turn speed. The webcast tends to flatten but live
and in the flesh her turns blew my eyelids back. I hope you
reprobates watched. | Photo: WSL
Day 2, Quik Pro: “Lakey Blew My Eyelids
Back!”
By Longtom
…BeachGrit correspondent wanders into women's
event. Loses the ability close eyes.
A garbage truck woke me in the dark so I got up, did 50
push-ups, drank an instant coffee black, no sugar and went
surfing at Snapper Rocks. Only for research mind, as part of my
demystifying campaign ’18.
Ordinarily, I don’t surf while covering a CT, Teahupoo excepted.
I know Nick Carroll surfs a lot but I think it’s disrespectful to
surf on the publisher’s dime. One day I’ll have to square off with
Chas’ wife and explain why Chas needed to do split shifts at the
Saloon to pay for me to go surfing.
I only had a blue Mick Fanning soft top on account of a hectic
day yesterday. My industrial kava shipment from Vanuatu (totally
legal) hadn’t come through so I was trying to tap my ADHD mate for
some Ritalin but he was in Nimbin starting a new peoples bank to
smash the Zionist Banking conspiracy and fuck driving to Nimbin on
a rainy Sunday. It would have to be straight edge on a foamy. No
leash.
The water was to die for, like a warm silk sheet. Insane,
surreal, ludicrous crowd. Roughly 50:50 gender split.
I paddled straight behind the rock and started hustling around
Fanning, just to see what that felt like. It felt good. Oh, of
course there was the negative mental self-talk to deal with, “What
the fuck are you doing out here next to Mick Fanning, beat it back
to Bribie you kook, get back on the bus” etc.
A large, shambolic red-headed gentleman dropped in on Adriano De
Souza and started screaming at him. Then shouting at Joel
Parkinson. Apparently, they knew each other. The Ranga ended the
dialogue by saying “just because you rip doesn’t mean you’re cool”.
A Japanese sunrise threw golden rays across the lineup as a
juvenile Australasian Gannet dove into the water a metre from me
and emerged with a wriggling garfish in it’s beak.
A set wave reared up, mine! I put the head down and as it
lurched saw Mick Fanning come in behind me and go. I almost Gabbied
him comrades but grabbed the foamy, hit the brakes and got pitched
over the falls, getting a beautiful bird’s-eye view of Mick
bottom-turning up into the tube.
You think you are going to get a set wave behind the rock during
a CT on a blue foamy? I’m here to tell you you won’t.
Nick Carroll in his unwritten best seller, How to be a Surf
Journalist, Chapter 3 instructs that the point of goofing off
and surfing on the publisher’s dime is not for the self-indulgence
of a personal ride amongst the pros but to objectively analyse who
is ripping. On this sage advice everyone pretty much looked like
they do on the webcast and only one person really stood out for me.
That was Italo Ferreira. Italo was taking the JJF at Margarets
line, which is to draw the bottom-turn a little shorter off the
base of the wave, getting the board up to the top with more speed
and then unleashing devastating top turns. The rotational speed of
Italo’s backhand top turns shocked me to the core.
Do you live in Wabash County Minnesota, like throwing gliders
for Stud pike in Lake Pepin, root for the Wild and Vikings during
season and personally know three people who mix their beer with
opioids? Congratulations, you are the new WSL target market and now
you have had surfing Snapper during a CT event demystified!
The demystifying campaign ended predictably. I finally hooked
into a nugget with a wall stretched into Little Marley, got the
soft top up into a high, fine trim-line and some non-pro thought,
“I’ll have that one”. Dropping the shoulder I hit him at full
speed, there was heavy contact. We both came up in the whitewater.
He looked at me and I said “Wut!”.
He shrugged and paddled off, I swam to the beach.
Do you live in Wabash County Minnesota, like throwing gliders
for Stud pike in Lake Pepin, root for the Wild and Vikings during
season and personally know three people who mix their beer with
opioids? Congratulations, you are the new WSL target market and now
you have had surfing Snapper during a CT event demystified!
Womens surfing all day. Did you watch? Entertained? Me, muchly,
richly and deeply. A few things stood out.
Writer Jen See observed a bad body issue vibe amongst Women’s
Professional surfing; “hella anorexia vibe” in her words. That vibe
was missing today, and for good I think. In its place, unabashed
athleticism. The focus was not the derriere but the surfing, and
the surfing carried the focus.
Easily.
From the microcosm to the macrocosm Women’s Sport is in the
ascendancy.
Lakey Peterson blew my tiny mind, once, against Carissa in round
three, heat one, and then again in her quarter-final against Tyler
Wright. She blew it with speed, aggression, repertoire and turn
speed. The webcast tends to flatten but live and in the flesh her
turns blew my eyelids back. I hope you reprobates watched.
I had a static picture of womens surfing being Steph, Tyler and
Carissa and a big gap to the rest. That’s flat-earth thinking, no
disrespect to Ol’ Willie Slater.
Malia Manuel, I thought she was a babe. A pretty gal who sold
truckloads of Nike activewear and surfed well enough to be a tour
backmarker. Completely wrong. In close to flawless performance
waves against Tyler Wright she laid down the finest exchanges,
maybe ever. Then repeated the dose against Carissa.
Both Carissa and Steph looked a little lost, under-cooked and
guilty of poor wave selection.
A butch lesbian in front of me with “not all who wander are
lost” tattooed on her calf was visibly upset when Steph got
knocked.
Sixteen year old Floridian Caroline Marks threw salty shots
skywards all day. Does it surprise a sixteen-year-old girl is on
tour? Not me, because of my objective analysis this morning I was
able to discern the warmup crowd at Snapper was at least half
composed of sixteen-year-old girls.
Lakey Peterson did better power turns today, in front of a crowd
composed of Brazilian girls with bubble butts and middle-aged
Australian men with skin like papier mache, than in any men’s heat
I saw yesterday.
Roxy Pro Gold Coast Round 3 Results:
Heat 1: Lakey Peterson (USA) 16.26, Carissa Moore (HAW) 14.76, Macy
Callaghan (AUS) 8.64
Heat 2: Malia Manuel (HAW) 13.96, Tyler Wright (AUS) 13.04, Coco Ho
(HAW) 11.86
Heat 3: Caroline Marks (USA) 14.17, Stephanie Gilmore (AUS) 13.40,
Silvana Lima (BRA) 12.76
Heat 4: Keely Andrew (AUS) 14.97, Sally Fitzgibbons (AUS) 14.16,
Johanne Defay (FRA) 13.53
Roxy Pro Gold Coast Quarterfinal Results:
Heat 1: Lakey Peterson (USA) 15.23 def. Tyler Wright (AUS)
12.67
Heat 2: Malia Manuel (HAW) 15.83 def. Carissa Moore (HAW) 12.60
Heat 3: Sally Fitzgibbons (AUS) 16.57 def. Caroline Marks (USA)
13.77
Heat 4: Keely Andrew (AUS) 11.87 def. Stephanie Gilmore (AUS)
10.83
Roxy Pro Gold Coast Semifinal Matchups:
Heat 1: Lakey Peterson (USA) vs. Malia Manuel (HAW)
Heat 2: Sally Fitzgibbons (AUS) vs. Keely Andrew (AUS)
Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast Round 2 Matchups:
Heat 1: John John Florence (HAW) vs. Mikey Wright (AUS)
Heat 2: Gabriel Medina (BRA) vs. Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA)
Heat 3: Matt Wilkinson (AUS) vs. Michael February (ZAF)
Heat 4: Adriano de Souza (BRA) vs. Ian Gouveia (BRA)
Heat 5: Joel Parkinson (AUS) vs. Patrick Gudauskas (USA)
Heat 6: Sebastian Zietz (HAW) vs. Michael Rodrigues (BRA)
Heat 7: Frederico Morais (PRT) vs, Ezekiel Lau (HAW)
Heat 8: Kanoa Igarashi (JPN) vs. Keanu Asing (HAW)
Heat 9: Caio Ibelli (BRA) vs. Willian Cardoso (BRA)
Heat 10: Conner Coffin (USA) vs. Yago Dora (BRA)
Heat 11: Joan Duru (FRA) vs. Tomas Hermes (BRA)
Heat 12: Jesse Mendes (BRA) vs. Wade Carmichael (AUS)
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Happy face swaps with John C Reilly!
Calm down: Kelly Slater gonna surf ’til
50!
By Chas Smith
He is out of Snapper but here for ten more
years!
Much consternation is ripping around the globe
right now as the great Kelly Slater just let it be known, via
Instagram, that he will not surf at 2018’s Snapper opener. That his
foot is ouchy and panicking is not the right call and… oh what am I
doing paraphrasing the man. He has fingers. He can speak for
himself.
I have officially withdrawn from the #QuikProGoldCoast. For
many months, my gut feeling has been to use this injury as a
platform to overhaul and reset my mind and body. The looming
excitement about a new year starting, my foot sort of magically
allowing me to surf the past couple of days, and a number of other
factors had me talking myself back into jumping in as soon as
possible against my better judgment. I feel I’ve had a couple of
half hearted attempts these past couple of years fighting injury
and desire. The foot injury symbolizes a lot at this point in my
career both as an ending and as a beginning. Hearing @mfanno talk
about his reasons for retiring at the upcoming Bells event
yesterday rang true for me also around going in the direction of
doing things that make you uncomfortable. Competing is a natural
environment for us both and it’s the easy route for me. I think it
best that I properly rehabilitate the injury and choose to surf
wholeheartedly, not from the excitement or stress of a last minute
arrival. It’s not very professional or responsible and it won’t
allow me to be at my best potential. I really love the energy
around the events, especially a new year, and I find myself at odds
especially with a potential Kirra swell approaching. I wish the
best for everyone this event and a special good luck to
@mikeyfebruary who will surf in my absence. Let him know if he wins
I’m requesting a 10% caddy fee!😀🤷🏽♂️ Thanks to the WSL and crew
for helping accommodate my predicament and I’ll be back when the
time is right for me.✌🏽
Long, I know, and those inclined to dismal outlooks/ in bad
relationships will read the parts about Mick and taking 10% of a
poor South African’s winnings as tacit admission of defeat. That
the end snuck up on them while they were… checking Instagram.
But here is the thing. Kelly Slater is not Mick Fanning. He is
not a fast bogan who hunchbacked his way to three accidental world
titles and a fortuitous shark punch.
No.
Kelly Slater is the greatest athlete of all time. He is even
greater than Tom Brady and Tom Brady has vowed to play professional
football until he is 50.
Professional football, for those unaware, is a difficult game. A
hard game where men leave and commit suicide because their brains
are so rattled and bodies so broken.
Professional surfing is not professional football and moreover
with the new changes. Do you not think Kelly will surf at his own
Surf Ranch? Do you not think he will surf in the four global Surf
Ranch events that will define the tour in four years? The future is
Kelly’s and he knows it. He will surf professionally until he is 50
or maybe even 60 in pools that he invented because what the hell
else is he going to do? Launch a beer company?
No.
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Son of a bitch makes this. Just over three-forty into
the clip.
Watch: Clay Marzo burn like an STD!
By Chas Smith
Freesurfing lives.
Clay Marzo is one of the most fun surfers to
watch and has been for years. Years and years even. Unique,
individual, uncommon, solitary, unexampled… adjectives lose their
weight when describing his approach which stands in sharp relief to
the sort of surfing being perfected by Championship Tour
professionals.
The “freesurf era” if it is proper to call last decade this is
long over. It died with the birth of Dane Reynolds’ beautiful
children and, as long as John John Florence dances on tour, will
stay dead for the foreseeable future but we always have Clay.
Mixing. Matching. Coloring outside the lines.
His latest film project is called Today’s Harvest and seems to
be the product of very many surfs around Maui.
“I can’t even keep up with him,” says his pal and fellow Maui
ripper Kai Barger. “He’s paddling out in the dark just
psyching.”
In the clip, in case you were wondering, he is riding a Super
Brand 6’2” x 19 ½” x 2 9/16” Mad Cat model. It is a big board for
big boy surfing.
