Two great surfers forced to suppress their native
brilliance…
Is there a
sadder tale than the one of Julian Wilson and Jordy Smith?
Two men whose brilliance was beaten out of ’em? Two men for whom
the world title beckons but remains out of reach? Yesterday, Jordy
was beaten by Wade Carmichael and Julian by Pat Gudauskas, “those torrid journeymen
viciously hurling sixes and sevens.”
How? Why?
Jordy and Julian, both
of whom will turn thirty this year, began their tour lives at a
time when progression and risk wasn’t adequately rewarded. In other
words, the progressive surfing that they were known for before
joining the tour had to be dramatically suppressed.
Over the years, Jordy and Julian adapted
their surfing and fully embraced a castrated approach to surfing
heats. As a fan, it was devastating to watch. The difference
between their freesurfing and their contest surfing was so wildly
exaggerated it allowed movies like Modern Collective to
have the impact they did.
Surfing safe, smooth and
consistent is what racked up the scores and led to world
titles. Cue: Mick
Fanning and Adriano de Souza.
Over the years, Jordy
and Julian adapted their surfing and fully embraced a castrated
approach to surfing heats. As a fan, it was devastating to watch.
The difference between their freesurfing and their contest surfing
was so wildly exaggerated it allowed movies like Modern
Collective to have the impact they did.
The tour was for boring,
athletic surfing and Kai Neville’s movies were for exciting, risky
surfing.
Jordy and Julian obliged
and continued to live their double lives.
Then, out of nowhere,
came John John and the Brazilian Storm and the floor fell out from
under them completely. Within a season, the paradigm completely
shifted and the best surfing in the world, by a long shot, was
happening on tour.
Jordy and Julian spent
the first half of their careers reigning in the progressive aspects
of their surfing only to be blindsided by the highest level of
in-jersey progressive surfing ever seen by John John, Gabriel
Medina and Filipe Toledo.
The saddest thing of all
is that they never truly did their best surfing in a
jersey.
Fanning, Parko, Slater
and Andy did their best surfing during contests. Look at any of
their movie parts and the level is the same while Slater pulled
shit in a jersey that you would never have seen from him in a
movie. The same can be said for John John, Medina and Toledo. Their
heats are the ones to watch and are at least as
exciting/progressive as their freesurfing clips.
Jordy and Julian have
been left to wallow in the void left between Fanning/Slater and
John John/Medina/Toledo. As hard as they tried, they were never
able to beat Fanning at his game and sure as hell aren’t going to
beat the progressive young-bloods of today, at least over the
course of a season.
If you were paying attention to global weather
patterns this past winter then you certainly watched with interest
as New York City got pounded with “bomb cyclone” after “bomb
cyclone.” Weatherpeople are uniquely talented at word play. It
feels as if they are able to re-brand phenomena with the greatest
names thus breathing life into an otherwise staid field.
“Bomb cyclone.”
I mean, have you read or heard anything quite so… cool sounding
this year? I haven’t and not even close. In case you were not
paying attention, a bomb cyclone is the rapid deepening of an
extratropical cyclonic low-pressure area resulting in cold, snow
and waves. New York surfers rejoiced but not all was as perfect as
the barreling chill pounding their shore.
Technology, you see, has destroyed their way of life. It used to
be too cold to surf and so only the hardened few would have the
guts to paddle out. Wetsuit technology has improved to the point of
freezing cold comfort though and now the lineups are choked.
The New York Times reports:
Joe Falcone looked past the snow-covered sand to the surf
and saw a fleet of humans bobbing up and down on boards. Dozens of
them. His blood pumped hot with frustration.
“There were at least 50 guys just in my eyesight,” Mr.
Falcone said, describing the scene as “mayhem.” He believes that
surfing should be like a meditation. “But it’s hard when you’re
sitting shoulder to shoulder with someone you don’t know. Out goes
the intimacy between man and Mother Nature.”
Surfing Rockaway Beach in the bitter cold used to be a
solitary affair, only for locals and the hard-core. But because of
a boom in popularity of the sport, the gentrification of the
neighborhood and advancements in wet-suit technology (a $600,
five-millimeter- thick suit can keep you warm for two hours), the
frigid city surf has gotten crowded, locals say.
“The newcomers are not respecting the natives,” said Mr.
Falcone, a sort-of local surf icon who builds surfboards in a
garage, blocks from the beach. There’s a lot of posing in Rockaway,
he said. “People think of it as an Instagram moment.”
The story goes on to record the injuries sustained by the horde
etc. and I very much felt Mr. Falcone and the other locals’ pain. I
too grew up surfing freezing cold water. Not only were the crowds
non-existent but I felt like an old-fashioned tough guy as I bobbed
and froze in my two rotten 3/2s. Like Burt Lancaster. Self-delusion
would not have been possible in a crowd and it makes me sad for the
New York locals.
Damn Instagram moments.
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Journeyman viciously throwing sixes and sevens! Hello
pro surfing 2018. San Clemente's Pat Gudauskas sinks tour leader
Julian Wilson. | Photo: WSL
Pro surfing in the post-Kelly, post-Mick era in
limbo as Aussie leg fails to fire…
Doom and gloom? Not
me boss. I’m a cheerful pessimist, by nature.
When this planet goes up in smoke
the chosen ones will board a silver spaceship and fly mother
nature’s seed to a new home in the sun. It’s just that in the
post-Kelly, post-Mick, pre-wavepool era, pro surfing is in limbo.
This Aussie leg is failing to fire and we, we being all of us
Australian surf fans who are the bedrock of the tour who can
support 3 CT’s with a population of just over 20 mill, are
wondering if the ground we are standing on is solid.
Or not.
Soph is not reassuring
us.
We are bewildered by pro surfing
2018, not depressed.
Do you recall those wonderful scenes
from the concluding stages of the best surf film ever made, Francis
Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now? Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz and Martin Sheen’s Captain
Willard are facing off finally after a long tortuous
journey. In a tense and extended tete-a-tete, Kurtz
delivers his Philosophy of War to Willard, detailing the story of
how Viet Cong soldiers went into a village and hacked off the arms
of little children who had been vaccinated for polio by the
west.
“My God, these men who had love in
their hearts,” Kurtz said, “had the strength… the strength
to do that… if I had ten divisions of those men, then our
troubles here would be over very quickly.”
Correct if wrong, but could not
Sophie G solve her audience growth problems, very, very quickly if
she had ten divisions of the Australian surf fan at her disposal to
import across the world at will?
The American surf fan, with all due
respect, is useless.
Utterly, utterly useless.
Can’t support a single CT on either
Pacific or Atlantic shores. The hopped-up Okie they appointed to
Ambassador of Leisure and Stoke, the great representative of middle
America, disappeared without trace down god knows what Hawaiian
rabbit hole. Middle America cared more, paid more attention to pro
surfing in the mid-sixties when CBS network covered live the Duke
Kahanomoku classic. Fact.
Kelly was the most bankable and reliable magic
maker in world sport. And for a little while it seemed like John
John Florence might repeat the dose, might bestride the pro surfing
landscape like Genghis Khan did the Eurasian steppe, as Kelly once
did. Conquering all. Vanquishing all. On our behalf. So we could be
entertained and transcend our miserable little existences and
forget all our flaws and deficiencies.
Being a pro surfing fan, even a
reluctant one, was an easy game to play for twenty years. Lock in
behind Kelly, then Andy, then Dane, or whatever member of the
Coolie crew got you hard, get your mind blown, then hit it and quit
while you were ahead.Ignore the
back-markers unless they went deep into the draw.
Kelly was the most bankable and
reliable magic maker in world sport. And for a little while it
seemed like John John Florence might repeat the dose, might
bestride the pro surfing landscape like Genghis Khan did the
Eurasian steppe, as Kelly once did. Conquering all. Vanquishing
all. On our behalf. So we could be entertained and transcend our
miserable little existences and forget all our flaws and
deficiencies.
But no, now we have to wade through
acres and acres of over-coached torrid journeymen viciously hurling
sixes and sevens at each other. At least, so far anyhow. John is no
Kelly. He won’t dominate generations the way Kelly did, or maybe
even Andy did. Ronnie Blakey said the new judging scale was a boon
for spectators, that it made it more exciting. Ronnie, as someone
who has mingled their sweat down in cattle class with the great
unwashed, I know, and you know, that ain’t so.
It seemed as if judges had completely screwed
the spread on the opening exchange with Wade Carmichael, handing it
to Wade instead of Jordy. A second look showed Wade clearly
out-powered him, and did so again to take the heat. Jordy raged
against the judging scale but the brutal truth is he safety surfed,
knowing safety surfing was to be penalised.”
Six heats played Lumpelstiltskin in
raggedy Bells Bowl this morning beginning with Jordy and Wade
Carmichael. After Jordy’s definition of flow went public I was
ready to deduct a .25 for every spaz-pump he laid down between
turns, but he conducted the first wave with perfect flow, throwing
golden showers heavenwards on each turn.
It seemed as if judges had
completely screwed the spread on the opening exchange with Wade
Carmichael, handing it to Wade instead of Jordy. But in retrospect
a second look showed Wade clearly out-powered him, and did so again
to take the heat. Jordy raged against the judging scale but the
brutal truth is he safety surfed, knowing safety surfing was to be
penalised and suffered the consequences.
Bourez and Owen Wright were too good
for Kolohe and Jesse Mendes. Both could be finalists or winners on
current form but you’d be crazy brave to make that call based on
the year to date.
I was curious to see how Fanning
would be scored now that the judging panel has decreed the Fanning
era over. And the answer was, as expected, low. Seabass opened up a
two-point spread on the opening exchange and that really should
have been a heat winning lead, based on current scoring. The crux
of the heat turned on a very, very shonky used car Fanning wheeled
to the front of the lot, put the keys in and convinced Zietz to
drive away in, “Just give it a test drive maaaayte, great runner,
comes with a free case of Balter beer and a softboard for the
kids!”
Seabass bought the pup, scored a
three and Fanning had nothing much more to do except ride a set
wave, protect the lead with priority and enjoy the love of the
victorian surf fan.
By the by, how refreshing, how
relaxing to just have six heats for the morning then call the thing
off? If the Wave Pool comp does nothing else than make suits
reconsider format it will have been worth it. Eight hours straight
of pro surfing would drive the Dalai Lama to pharmaceuticals. As it
turned out, three hours, six heats, felt sublime.
Griff had plenty to say in the booth
yesterday. He identified the opening turn as the one being paid
most heavily by judges. Incorrectly. At Bells it’s the
opening and closing turns. The primacy, recency
effect. It’s the first and last things in a
sequence that have the strongest effect. The things we remember,
judges included.
That is no slur on Griff’s surfing
despite a growing mountain of hype. He has the best closing turn on
tour. As seen at Haliewa, as seen at Bells this morning. That
whole-body huck will win many heats but you need something at the
start to make it conclusive. Wilko put two huge turns with air
drops as punctuation on a heat winning wave to put the heat away.
Griff’s buzzer air-reverse was not enough but did it at least show
he knew what could win.
Is Bells going to mean anything by
years end? Is Snapper? The deck seems to be completely reshuffled
and no one is standing on solid ground. Julian won Snapper then put
on a tepid performance for the final heat of the day against Pat
Gudauskas. So often he follows up something brilliant with
something lame, can’t seem to produce what is needed, despite an
army of cliches at his disposal for the post-heat presser and the
best all round technique on tour. Is that a problem of will, of
destiny or maybe some deficit that can be overcome in
time?
Time that is running out. For him,
for you, for the human race.
Kidding. Take a joke you misery
guts!
Silver spaceships will save us all!
And the Australian surf fan will be first picked to colonise
space.
Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach Remaining Round 3
Matchups:
Heat 7: John John Florence (HAW) vs. Ezekiel Lau (HAW)
Heat 8: Joel Parkinson (AUS) vs. Frederico Morais (PRT)
Heat 9: Adriano de Souza (BRA) vs. Conner Coffin (USA)
Heat 10: Filipe Toledo (BRA) vs. Italo Ferreira (BRA)
Heat 11: Adrian Buchan (AUS) vs. Jeremy Flores (FRA)
Heat 12: Gabriel Medina (BRA) vs. Willian Cardoso (BRA)
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Kelly Slater complains of check-in staff receiving
"kickbacks" for slamming passengers with excess baggage
charges.
Getting robbed on an ultra low cost regional
airline!
There are only four certainties left in this
life. The sun will rise in the morning. Guns don’t kill people, I
do. Three is a crowd. And Kelly Slater hates spending money. He
hates spending it, I think, on anything but really really hates
spending it when he thinks he shouldn’t be. Like today for example.
It is Easter Sunday in the United States of America and also April
Fool’s day. I generally loathe April Fool’s jokes, especially April
Fool’s surf jokes but I haven’t seen any today so am hoping that
Easter mowed over the lame.
Whatever the case, 11x World Champion Kelly Slater took moments
out of his Easter/April Fool’s celebrations to complain about ultra
low cost regional airline Jetstar’s baggage policy.
Kelly writes on Instagram:
@jetstaraustralia loves thier baggage charges. Apparently
the people checking you in get a kickback on what they charge you
at the end of the month. Overweight charges equate to about
$.50/ounce!
Just paid over $200 MEL – OOL for baggage, more than the
price of my ticket… again. I’ll never learn. Just FYI, not an April
Fool’s joke.
Now. $200 Australian is roughly $150 U.S. which is a smokin’
deal for a ticket from Melbourne to Coolangatta. But with smokin’
deals come nightmare headaches. I don’t know if anyone has informed
Kelly yet but the low ticket price for ultra low cost regional
airlines is what’s called a loss leader. It doesn’t cover the gas
in the plane much less the upholstery on the seats. Those who feel
they are getting a deal are soon dealt a full deck of $50 dollar
charges covering everything from wearing shoes onto the airplane to
breathing. I was once charged $50 for bringing a briefcase onto
Jetstar and another $50 for breathing (after I passed out and my
body started doing it reflexively).
I get that surfboard baggage fees can be extreme but how much
does it cost to surf Surf Ranch again? Is it $10,000 for a few
hours?
Oh man oh man oh man oh man… Oh man. Have you
ever thought about changing careers? Of course you have. You’ve
looked across the aisle and wondered how you’d look in a pilot’s
hat or fisherman’s overalls. You’ve drifted off to sleep imagining
that you are saving lives/changing the world. But a new day always
dawns and that new day features the career you are accidentally in.
There is no saving lives/changing the world, only TPS reports and
shared fridges.
Well, at least we have Dean “Dingo” Morrison. You might remember
the li’l charger as part of the Coolangatta explosion that brought
us Mick Fanning and Joel Parkinson. He, alongside those two, played
on the championship tour for some time before drifting into the big
wave game and then away.
Until now.
Dingo is back but as a boxer instead of a surfer and let us turn
to the Gold Coast
Bulletin for elucidation.
“It was a real life experience and I was really proud of
myself, proud of myself for facing those fears.”
Morrison, who has been sparring and training for fitness and
to learn the sport the past few years, says he felt he acquitted
himself pretty well against opponent Chris Hodges who already had
several fights under his belt.
Hodges won the three, two-minute round bout in a split
decision on points and Morrison said he was “no push over” and he
was just relieved to be standing at the final bell.
“It was a crazy experience and I have never been so
exhausted in my life. I was just gone and it took me 30 minutes
just to talk afterwards.
But despite the intensity of the experience, Morrison said
stepping into the ring at Seaguls Club in Tweed Heads was one of
the best things he’d ever done: “I love learning new things and
that was one of the best experiences.
“I wouldn’t say it was enjoyable but I learned a lot about
myself. But I won’t be jumping back in there any time soon, that’s
for sure.
Morrison says he can’t even remember much of the fight but
it was something he had always wanted to do.
Mmmmmm. Won’t be jumping back anytime soon? I suppose that’s the
thing with career changes. The grass being always greener etc.
