I can say, without fear of being overly
dramatic, that professional surfing was on its death bed
after the Founders Cup event held in Lemoore, California. There it
lay, cold and clammy. Its pulse could only be found by distressed
asset management experts who merely shook their heads as they
walked away, mumbling, “It won’t be long now.” The pool was a dud.
It didn’t showcase the progression that the people craved. It
didn’t provide any adrenalized thrill. The only benefit was that
professional surfing could air live for one hour on CBS, a
television channel preferred by geriatrics on their own death
beds.
What a miserable end. And with the tour headed to Rio de Janeiro
afterward it felt as if the damage sustained in Lemoore would
metastasize in the muck and it would all be over. Distressed asset
management experts sighed deeply, knowing the cadaver would be a
difficult one to sell. Maybe Old Navy needs a fun backdrop to their
Scorchin’ Summer Capris campaign? Maybe Bud Light Orange?
But then a miracle happened. Waves, for one, streamed into
Brazil like the country hasn’t seen in decades. Fun waves, dancing
waves, waves that you and I love surfing ourselves and love
watching surfed by professionals too. Little sneaky barrel
sections. Unexpected ramps that launched the Best Surfers in the
World airborne.
And Filipe Toledo, for two. He won the event, beating
Australia’s brave Wade Carmichael in a final that would not have
been the same without him. There he put on yet another show of what
professional surfing can actually be, how much fun it can actually
look. He swished, he soared, he won the event and in so doing saved
professional surfing.
The distressed asset management experts shrugged and moved on
over to see what Rip Curl is up to these days. “I heard they’re not
excited about the possible summit between the United States and
North Korea…” one said as he walked away. “…I heard there’s worries
that, if things go well, a lack of slave labor will hurt the bottom
line.”
Analysis on the event and videos to come.
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Dispatched: Controversial shaper
disappears!
By Derek Rielly
Likes games of "yellow face" and says, "Fuck Asian
imports." Can you guess?
Yesterday it was revealed, via the comments
pane below a Kelly Slater Don’t Like
Brazil story, that the Instagram account of Peter
Schroff had been disappeared.
Name familiar? Maybe.
The Newport, California, based Schroff is a shaper of note, if
only regionally, who made his name in the nineteen eighties with
his eye-catching graphic design and surfboards painted like happy
goldfish.
In recent months, Schroff, who is sixty three years old and who
calls himself “da pimp”, mounted an online attack on surfboards
that were built in Asian countries.
It’s important to note… Asian countries… ’cause it
ain’t Australian-made or Japanese-made boards he was going after,
but those built in south-east Asia for fairly obvious labour-cost
reasons.
Despite a power base of only a few hundred followers his often
very funny Photoshopped images of Kelly Slater and Mark Price (who
build their Firewire boards mostly in Asia) were successful in
engaging everyone from Shane Dorian to Joel Tudor and innumerable
shapers and surfers.
But now? The Peter Schroff show has gone. What…who…
iced it?
Had Hayden Cox, an early target, or Mark Price/Kelly Slater,
current villains of choice for Schroff mounted legal cases?
I called Hayden who said he had switched off from Schroff and
hadn’t seen his account in a year or so.
Maybe I should call Price, he said.
I called Mark Price, a former pro surfer from South Africa
turned Firewire CEO and whom I like, who said he hadn’t complained,
via IG, Facebook or otherwise.
Price told me, “The only thing I can think of is that Facebook
revised its terms of use, coming down harder on racism and
homophobia and cyber-bullying. Maybe he hit that threshold in their
estimation.”
Price added, “He has every right to advocate his position.
Personally, I didn’t like how he did it. I’m sure it’ll rear its
ugly head elsewhere. The issue is far from over.”
And Schroff?
The contact button is gone from his website, he doesn’t answer
Facebook messages and, when his IG account was live, he didn’t
respond to DM requests for a interview.
You out there, sissy-boy?
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The look of a champion.
Championship: Is this Julian Wilson’s
year?
By Chas Smith
The sneaky slider from Coolum is poised to make
history!
There has been so much brouhaha surrounding
this year’s World Surf League Champion’s Tour that traditional
storylines are becoming lost in the weeds. Early on we had a major
realignment, dropping Fiji, Trestles, Pipeline (I think) and
introducing Lemoore. Mick Fanning retired in an emotionally
touching Bells’ final. Sharks interrupting Margaret River. The
ultimate disappointment of professional competitive wave pool
surfing. Uluwatu becoming Western Australia’s Tourism Board’s new
property, etc.
So many head twisting turns that it has been impossible to focus
on the simple. Like, is this finally the year Julian Wilson takes
home the number one trophy?
I have predicted his ascent to the very top since
BeachGrit first launched some four years ago and have been
stymied each. But is this his time?
It seems so. There he sits atop the Jeep Leaderboard wearing the
yellow jersey. He has performed well in Brazil, still in the
quarterfinals. His nearest competition, Italo Ferreira has been
bumped out. Mick Fanning is now retired (emotionally touching) and
the rest of the Brazilians are rabidly hungry, surfing incredibly
but… I just don’t know. This feels like Julian Wilson’s year.
He is a father
now, as you know, and this father knows the powerful
wings a child lends.
So what do you think? Sport’s gambling is basically legal now in
the United States of America. Hopefully at this time next year I
can wander down to my local bar and plop down $100 on Julian Wilson
but this year at this time I’m stuck with mere theoreticals.
But theoretically let’s say Julian makes it to the semis in
Brazil before being clubbed by Filipe. Then off they all go to
Keramas and tell me there ain’t a better wave in the world suited
to Julian’s game than Bali’s favorite playground. Let’s say semis
and then J-Bay where Julian has been a regular finalist plus has
bonus shark power™ from that incident a few years back. Chopes,
France, Portugal are all quarters or above for the boy. Right? Then
Pipe* and it is difficult to imagine another hoisting that number
one trophy.
Tell me I’m wrong. I bet you can’t. I bet you $100 you
can’t.*
*a theoretical $100 until next year.
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He stood in the chest deep water and breathed. Not
steady, compose-yourself breaths, but deep, theatrical Wim Hof
breaths. He had soft eyes which alluded to intense focus but was
actually flirtation. This is my moment, this is me, this is what I
do...went the internal monologue...likely to a pounding backdrop
of: LOOK AT ME. LOOK AT ME. LOOK. AT. ME.
Just in: Brazil shits on Kelly Slater!
By Chas Smith
The caipirinhas are going to taste twice as sweet
down there tonight.
For years the greatest surfer to ever live,
Kelly Slater, has treated the country of Brazil very poorly. He has
mostly refused to travel to there for professional surf competition
or romantic rendezvous though he once dated crown jewel of Três de
Maio, Rio Grande do Sul, Gisele Bündchen. He gladly takes the
mulligan even when in actual World Surf League Championship Tour
Jeep Leaderboard Yellow Jersey contention instead of flying LATAM
south and east.
Yes, Kelly Slater’s disdain for both order and progress is well
known and part of me wonders if this past month’s Founders’ Cup
event at Lemoore, California’s Surf Ranch was held mere days before
the Oi Rio Pro waiting period because he couldn’t but help twisting
the knife, assuming that Rio would be uninspiring and his own Surf
Ranch would continue an unfettered publicity run.
Well, how about that? Barrinha just kicked the shit out of
the pool.
Best men’s round one of the year. Free, unpredictable
surfing, just the way we know it to be.
There were lame heats and almost brilliant ones. There were
peelers and heaving backwashy ones and sharp-edged little beauties.
People did free-form things on closeouts. The two closing rides of
JJF’s and the Mongrel’s in their round one heat obliterated
everything done last weekend in Lemoore. Hell, the Mongrel’s
free-fall off the lip move did that on its own.
Watching it, I kept thinking, “Maybe this is just me.” After
all, I am an Australian surfer, thus my surfing eye is a sucker for
five foot rock-wall wedged up beachies. It’s DNA for
chrissake.
But then I thought, “Who ISN’T a sucker for five foot
rock-wall wedged up beachies?” Anyone who doesn’t like that stuff
doesn’t like life.
I don’t believe in karma but I do believe in Brazil and
apparently in order and progress too. The caipirinhas are going to
taste twice as sweet down there tonight.
Ding dong the witch is dead etc.
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"Upside down, fifteen, sixteen feet across, four or
five feet above the lip, fully inverted, 540 with a perfect
landing. That was as snowboard as it gets when you’re surfing,"
says the commentator Chris Cote.
Cote: “Filipe just landed the air of the
year!”
By Derek Rielly
Chris Cote and Kaipo Guerrero analyse Filipe's
ten-pointer in Brazil…
A short while ago, the Brazilian Filipe Toledo scored a
raft of perfect tens with what the commentator Chris
Cote just described to me as “an upside-down, fifteen,
sixteen feet across, four or five feet above the lip, fully
inverted, 540 with a perfect landing. That was as snowboard as
surfing gets.”
Cote, who is a guest commentator in Rio although his terrific
performance there and at the Founders Cup suggests he will be
joining the roster full-time, was enjoying a hamburger dinner in
Rio with Kaipo Guerrero when
asked to discuss the manoeuvre.
He coils it up like a cobra and you know he’s going to strike
and you know it’s going to be crazy. You become speechless even as
he winds up. You have no choice but to get excited. The electricity
flows.”
“I was in the booth with Pottz and (Brazilian tour rookie) Jesse
Mendes at the time. And it freaked everybody out. One thing about
Filipe that’s incredible is the way he telegraphs his airs. He
coils it up like a cobra and you know he’s going to strike and you
know it’s going to be crazy. You become speechless even as he winds
up. You have no choice but to get excited. The electricity
flows.”
I suggest to Cote that the air could’ve been a career-ender
given his brutal on-the-flats landing. Filipe could’ve buckled both
legs.
“Oh yeah, but he doesn’t think like that. He doesn’t think he’s
going to fall. The way that he landed in the flats it equates to a
skater doing a trick down fifteen stairs. It’s about the same
distance. There’s a famous skate spot called El Toro, twenty
something stairs, and it became the benchmark of
landing a skate trick. People are always breaking boards and their
ankles. With Filipe, you gotta look at how high he was above the
wave. You figure it’s a four or six-foot wave, he was four or six
feet above that wave, that’s at least twelve feet he’s coming from
to the flats. That in itself is crazy. He’s almost upside down and
he lands it. It’s like a snowboarder landing in the flats in a half
pipe. And there was no bobble. It didn’t affect him. He had the
perfect spring right when he landed.”
How was the reaction in the commentary booth?
“Jesse had to cough and he looked down right when it happened
and he looked up and asked, ‘What just happened?’ He went silent
too, but again, it’s Filipe so it’s not surprising to anybody when
he does something like that. It’s shocking in the moment but it’s
not surprising.”
“That wave will solve any discussion about the scale being set
to the mid-range,” says Cote. “It was an easy ten across the board,
there was maybe one nine-nine, but the perfect ten score came a
second or two after he landed it.”
Nearby Cote, and also eating dinner, are the WSL judges.
“That wave will solve any discussion about the scale being set
to the mid-range,” says Cote. “It was an easy ten across the board,
there was maybe one nine-nine, but the perfect ten score came a
second or two after he landed it.”
How does it compare to Filipe’s ten in the pool?
“Oh I mean, twice as high, twice as far and the wave was twice
as big. Until they can make pools six feet there’s no comparison
although those guys will figure it out.”
And compared to his backside huck against John John in France
two years ago?
“Today’s air was more controlled and cleaner,” says Cote. “That
was a silent sniper shot. This is the air of the year on tour.”
In the background, Kaipo hollers that Seth Moniz’s air at Waco
is better. Does he say ‘mo bettah?’ I’m unsure.
I ask Kaipo to analyse. “It’s like comparing grass court over a
clay court. It’s different. We don’t know how many attempts Seth
needed to make his air. We do know how many Filipe made.
One. There it is.”
And the ambience on the beach?
“Everyone jumped out of their seats in the competitor’s area. On
the beach, men, women, children, grandpas, aunties, everyone jumped
up.”
What’s most interesting about the air is Filipe had already won
the heat. This was a little theatre for the crowd.
“You gotta put everything in context,” says Kaipo. “Whether it’s
a get-a-score air or a victory-lap air. There’s a difference
mentally between the get-a-score air and the victory-lap air. A
victory lap allows you free your mind.”
Still, says Cote, “John John is the best in the air, hands
down.”
