Payoffs, bribes, graft, death threats, prostitutes,
cocaine!
I will tell you, as a non-fan of soccer, the
greatest part of the World Cup has historically been the massive
corruption in/around/under/on top of the governing body FIFA. It
was so bald-faced, so ridiculous as to make for wonderful comedy.
Payoffs, bribes, graft, death threats, prostitutes, cocaine… You
can’t script this!
Like, Qatar getting to host a World Cup, for example. I feel
this was the dollar bill that broke FIFA’s back, giving the event
to the hottest place in the world filled with oil rich sheiks
driving Bugattis. But still very very very hot though nobody even
cared because corrupt money never sleeps (because cocaine) and
then the back was broken and now there is a new process for
potential countries who dream of hosting the event.
So maybe FIFA cleaned up but as we both learned in school
corruption can be neither created nor destroyed. It has to flow
somewhere and did it all flow to Olympic surfing?
The great Maurice
Cole wondered two days ago, for example, what in
the world Australia’s Olympic hopefuls were doing traveling to
Lemoore, California to partake in a few days “training session” at
Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch. Let’s recall his words:
Who’s paying for all the tickets? The hotels? The rental
cars? The pool? What’s the total budget? Every single airfare is a
couple of grand from Australia. It makes no fucking sense
whatsoever.
Unless.
Unless.
It’s a WSL marketing exercise. Are they trying to put
pressure on the ISA and IOC to use that pool for the Olympics? Why
else would you be training in a pool? It’s the worst training you
could do for Chiba. For fuck’s sake, send ’em to Chiba and train
over there. It’s a lot cheaper and a lot more relevant to go to
Chiba and surf two-to-three-foot beachbreaks and work on their
technique there instead of in long lefts and rights.
Well, yesterday it was revealed that Chiba, Japan is indeed
building a Surf Ranch that will be ready in time for the 2020
games. Derek Rielly
wrote of this development:
“The planned construction site is on 57 hectares near the
Tisayama Expressway. Land acquisition was completed by March this
year. The size of the wave pool is 580 metres in length and 150
metres in width and equipped with a device that generates
artificial waves by electronic control and generates waves up to
about two metres in height.”
And this has payoffs, bribes, graft, death threats, prostitutes,
cocaine written all over it! The World Surf League hijacking the
Olympic Games in order to feature/sell more pools worldwide, etc.
etc.
I will be pursuing this doggedly, like Rogers and Hammerstein,
and will win a Pultizer and also Make Surfing Great Again because
who doesn’t love corruption?