Three tour victories for Italo. If not for a
couple of dubious judging decisions he'd be in the race. As Fanning
noted, surfers have been mystified by some of the calls. WSL
MEO Rip Curl Pro, Portugal: “More tedious
and long-winded than the Old Testament!”
By Longtom
Italo Ferriera wins, world title goes to Pipe
etc.
I had to laugh the other day. Chas did it, he
always makes me laugh. Not on the Grit, but in Penthouse
magazine. He was being interviewed spruiking Cocaine
+Surfing, A Love Story. Running the line that surfing is a
curse, a dangerous, difficult addiction that ruins lives etc etc. I
know there is a clear line here, between those who think thus and
others like Nick Carroll and me who think surfing is no drama, and
in fact, quite a blessing.
Chas gets it ass backwards in my opinion. The curse is not
surfing, but surf-writing. That’s the dangerous addiction, the
slimy little hole to curl up and masturbate in. Tedious and brief
is how S-Town’s John B Macklemore summed up life. He might have
been summing up the “careers” of surf writers. Tedious and
brief.
Two hours sleep, twelve hours driving and I got home and the
beloved had the car packed.
“Whats going on?” I said.
“We’re going to Iluka, our anniversary. Remember?”
My blood froze.
“But, but I’ve got Portugal to cover”.
“You fucking dumb arse, fuck Portugal!”
So here I am, in the Iluka pub, Ipswich dogs on one screen,
Wentworth trots on the other, and a whole heap of ‘splainin to do
in the morning.
Travis Logie puts the finals on hold at six until seven, seven
until eight, eight until 9.30. 9.30 until 10.15. 10.15 until 11.30.
11.30 until 12.15. There might have been more calls. Four quarters,
a semi and a final. How could surfing ever be this much of a
ball-ache? Tedious and more long winded than the Old Testament.
The pub shuts and I’m driving around Iluka backstreets parked up
next to asbestos fishing shacks like a crackhead. A gaggle of drunk
chicks stagger past screaming 4 Non Blondes What’s Up at the top
of their lungs.
I text my lady: Late start, home by three am.
She texts back: Fuck this shit. Ring Derek and pull out.
Give him his money back.
I text back: Can’t babe. Already spent it before I got it
(sheepish emoji).
Only two questions remain. Can Medina win the event and will
Julian fall to Duru in the Quarters? In my dirty little black heart
I want Wilson to fall, Medina to win. Get some sort of climax to
justify the sleep deficit and marital strife.
Italo smashed Bourez in QF1 in fluffy head-high surf, a redux of
their Keramas final.
Kaipo called Medina’s performance in QF2 relentless. There’s no
better word for it. He took to the air every wave. Every single one
made. 100% make rate for most of a half hour heat with the World
Title on the line. Judges seemed sleepy and unresponsive. There was
confusion expressed by Fanning in the booth over the numbers. He
called the low-balling by the judges this year “disheartening”.
Medina ground ahead. Flat, fast spins with perfect landings, corked
tail-high whips. Finally on wave 11 he fell on a backflip attempt.
Heat analyser will not do it justice. It was an insane performance.
It rendered Wilkinson mute. Medina called Wilko’s attempts to play
“mind games” on Insta “pretty funny”.
Ten minutes passed in the Wilson/Duru QF with the ocean
unresponsive, still in recovery after the Medina onslaught. Duru
laid down the first scoring track at the half way point. A flat
seven for a well surfed but forgettable right. J-dub threw forced
airs into the wind with no luck, then went to meat and potatoes. No
dice. Duru lanced another small right and that was it. Wilson out.
My heart soared.
Crunch time in the Medina/Italo semi. Medina had promised an air
show and that was what was delivered. Every wave. Pump, pump, punt.
After a semi like that and France the Air Show concept has to be
put back on the shelf. Completely redundant. Medina held a solid
lead after greasing a slick alley oop. I desperately wanted Gabby
to bring it home. Not to be. Italo launched a very lofted
full-rotation reverse into the breeze for a 9.3 and the heat. We go
to Pipe. Boo hoo.
The hate against the WSL on Facey was astounding. The call to
run was impugned. The boggy Facebook feed drew rage. It put the WSL
in full defensive mode. Trav Logie was called upon to justify the
call. Kaipo implored peeps struggling with the Facey feed to go
back to a desktop and watch on WSL.com. Fine if you can. Not that
easy parked up in a back alley in a small fishing town watching on
a phone.
Correct if wrong but when Erik brings in a premium
direct-to-consumer experience, or whatever the latest business
buzzwords are for pay per view, won’t the whole despised,
disastrous Facebook deal have to be nixed? There can’t be a person
alive amongst the 4 billion on Planet Earth who’ll stump cold hard
cash for a boggy facebook feed.
Right? It’s possible at 3.30am I may not be seeing the full
picture clearly. Feel free to correct.
Can’t tell you exactly much about the Final between Italo
Ferreira and the giant killing Joan Duru. I noted the Facey live
audience went from a more or less solid 14K to 9K and change, then
magically Italo was being chaired up the beach, the winner, in a
soft Portugese evening light. I must have passed out, again. Three
tour victories for Italo. If not for a couple of dubious judging
decisions he’d be in the race. As Fanning noted, surfers have been
mystified by some of the calls.
Sunday morning.
Nothing easy about it. I feel like a whore whose done too many
hard tricks. Fuck Europe, Fuck the WSL and if anyone offers a surf
writing gig kids, just say no. It’s the biggest evolutionary cul de
sac God ever invented. If you see a surf writer standing on the
Pacific Highway outside the Iluka turnoff help a brother out, would
ya. For the love of God.
See you at Pipe.
World title scenarios:
– If Gabriel Medina finishes 1st or 2nd at the Billabong
Pipe Masters, he wins the World Title;
– If Gabriel Medina finishes 3rd at the Billabong Pipe Masters,
Julian Wilson & Filipe Toledo will need to finish 1st;
– If Gabriel Medina finishes 5th-25th, Julian Wilson & Filipe
Toledo will need a 2nd or 1st at Pipe.
This is a bona fide all-girl super group: Steph, Missy
Fanning and Jolene P. Photo: Steve
Sherman/@tsherms/WSL
Stephanie Gilmore: Tom Curren and Joel
Parkinson “surf like girls!”
By Derek Rielly
Stylish male surfers channel inner gal…
I really don’t think it’s a stretch to call the
Australian Stephanie Gilmore the best female surfer of all
time, and perhaps, one of the game’s best choreographers.
There’s an accessibility to her surfing as well as a freedom and a
joy, even if it feels a little confected sometimes.
In an interview with
Britain’s The Telegraph newspaper yesterday, Gilmore
played the usual hits: pay gap, insecure men in the lineup, having
to wear a damn bikini and be sexy and how she’d be three times
wealthier if she was a man or as gorgeous as Giselle and so on.
Sample quotes.
“There’s always a couple of local guys who will flex and try
and overpower you with their testosterone. I do know that there are
a lot of women who feel it a lot and there are guys out there who
are a nightmare to surf with.”
“When there’s a couple of girls in the line up who surf
better than them, I think their egos get a little bit of a
check.”
“If the waves were terrible and you put the men out in them,
it’s going to be boring too. Now, when the women actually surf
great waves, everyone’s like, ‘oh my god, the girls are ripping,
they’ve come so far’ and we’re like, ‘no, we surf like that. We
just never used to get the chance to show you’.’
Her posit, towards the end, that the best surfers approach a
wave like women is a new angle and one that I like very much.
“When you think about the most stylish male surfers – Tom
Curren, Joel Parkinson – guys who, when you watch them are so
fluid and seamless. They have a graceful touch. It’s funny,
people say to me, ‘you surf like a guy’. But actually, no, the
greatest guy surfers surf like girls.”
Do you surf like a girl or wish that you surfed like a girl?
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Propaganda: Brave politician superimposes
self getting barreled at Jaws!
By Chas Smith
Or maybe Mavericks!
Political propaganda used to be much more of an
art than it is now. Today, a candidate or political party must
merely hire a room full of Russians, Ukrainians, Indians, whomever,
spend a few thousand dollars on Facebook and blast out some less
than accurate news. Hell, I don’t even know that the room needs to
be full.
It is an ugly job lacking nuance or appreciable style. Like a
Thomas Kinkaid painting compared to the Picassos and Rembrandts of
old. For in the past, physical photographs were altered. Men
disappeared. Whole families disappeared. Cigars disappeared.
The Nazis did it well but the Soviet Russians did it better. For
example:
Where’d the cosmonaut in the back go? Like magic, he never
existed. Scrubbed from history.
Dana Rohrabacher, Republican incumbent serving greater Orange
County, decided to go old school but also improve on the art.
Instead of disappearing an erstwhile foe he added himself to the
scene in a dynamic moment right before getting barreled at either
Jaws or Mavericks. Pipeline? Do you know the wave?
It doesn’t matter because it is a job of which Goebbels would be
proud. That Molotov would stand and applaud.
There Dana Rohrabacher is, crouched on his gun maybe built from
American-made soft-top. Eyes pointed toward the exit. Buttocks
tensed and ready.
To further drive the point home, Rohrabacher boldly declares in
all caps (favorite of propagandists), “I RIDE WAVES HERE, AND MAKE
WAVES IN WASHINGTON.” (real quick is the comma necessary in this
sentence? Ben Marcus? Are you there?)
“Here” clearly being Jaws. Or Mavericks. An Oahu outer reef?
It doesn’t matter.
The best propaganda floats above question.
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
WSL wants to know if you're some kind of
"expert surfer"…
From the we-know-nothing-about-surfing
department: Are you an “expert” surfer?
By Derek Rielly
Come try the WSL's comprehensive survey…
I’ve had a visceral hatred of surveys and focus groups
and whatever other marketing that presumes the consumer knows what
he wants since I worked on a fading men’s magazine back in
the early two thousands.
Watched twenty-five grand disappear as I sat behind a one-way
window looking at twenty-somethings paw at the mag and say, “Yeah,
nah, yeah”, “More girls, maybe”.
Focus groups. Surveys. Bullshit after bullshit.
No one knows what they want until it slams ’em in the face.
People will say what they think you want ’em to say or what they
think makes ’em look smart. Put hip-hop through a focus group in
the disco era and it never would’ve happened. All those great
movies that were made on the back of some crazy genius, Raging
Bull, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather?
Too slow, too opaque.
According to surveys, Mad ol Hillary Clinton was going to be the
forty-fifth prez and Britain wasn’t gonna Brexit.
Now, as has been mentioned in the comments, the World Surf
League has a survey doing the rounds. And she’s a doozy, as
old-timers like to say. Obvs, it’s a feeler to see how we’re coping
with the idea of pay-per-view but it also calls for a comprehensive
self-examination.
Paired attitudinal statements where you hit a slider,
The little game, below, where you’re asked to respond to the
statement “I am an expert surfer” is a curly one ain’t she?
What is an expert surfer? Is it someone who knows how to carry
their board, insert their fins in the position suggested on the
packaging, stand up on an unbroken wave and combo a couple of
turns?
Or is it, as I would think, someone who can, or could before
they got too old, take a set at Pipe and beat a small wave to hell.
Some sort of shaping skill would help, too.
Kelly Slater is an expert surfer. John John too. Gerry Lopez, I
suppose. Barton Lynch.
But a clown fan punching buttons on his laptop?
Other important questions: Do you spend a lot of money on
surfing gear?
Are you always talking about surfing with your
friends?
Do here! (Fifty
percent off WSL merch if you do before October 24, too.)
