Introducing Sophie's Choice!

Would you like to know something that drives me really crazy? I will tell you. It drives me really crazy when organizations, companies, leagues draw up arbitrary rules then become bound by them like God himself dictated the terms.

Like, did you know Amazon workers are forbidden to drink anything other than water while working? No coffee, tea, boba tea, anything but water. Employees are fired over the offense. The middle-managers shrugging their shoulders and telling heartbroken ex-Amazonians, “Nothing I can do, man. My hands are tied.”

Also like the World Surf League’s injury wildcard rule and let us read commissioner Kieren Perrow.

We truly appreciate and understand the value of being on tour and take this process very seriously. As it has for years, this process includes an independent medical review board, which assesses the applicants based on severity of injury and the impact it has on the surfer’s ability to compete at the Championship Tour level. In the case of 2018, all three applicants were deemed to have severe injuries that prevented them from competing in multiple events. From there, we apply our technical criteria and career achievement factors – which include World Titles, career results, prior year ranking, and ranking at time of injury. While all three have strong cases, we have determined that Kelly Slater (USA) and John John Florence (HAW) will receive the WSL wildcards for 2019 and Caio Ibelli (BRA) will be the first replacement for the tour – not something we guarantee to a third applicant most seasons but is deserving in this case.

Bullshit, all of it. Kelly and John John were both selectively surfing over the course of the year and while I don’t doubt their injuries, the severity of them compared to Caio’s is… chuckle-able at best.

Now, I’m not saying that Caio Ibelli should be let in over Kelly, who did more selective surfing than John John.

No.

I’m saying that the World Surf League should simply do away with the “injury wildcards” altogether and call the two available spots, “Sophie’s Choice” (after World Surf League CEO Sophie Goldschmidt not the early 1980s tear-jerker). Of course the WSL wants eyeballs. Of course Kelly and John John bring more eyeballs than Caio. Wrapping the decision in arbitrary “injury” gauze is a silly affectation since the League made the rule in the first place and could very easily change it and should change it for next year.

It’s probably also racist.

Once it becomes Sophie’s Choice then Dane Reynolds can also come back on tour.

And Bruce Irons.

And The White Fijian.

Etc.

International media swoons while the World Surf League stays invisible!

The sun should be shining very brightly this morning in Santa Monica, home of The World Surf League. The best day of professional surfing history just wrapped in epic conditions. The new champion, Gabriel Medina, is talented, handsome and theoretically marketable. He didn’t win by just hanging on. He won by destroying the competition. By sending a grown man with interesting nipples straight over the falls.

But another narrative is being squeezed through the lamestream media. The story of Mavericks, what an epic day it was and how there was no competition. Shall we read some headlines?

Surfers brave monster Mavericks waves, despite no competition (ABC 7 local news)

Despite Mavericks delay, surfers still ride 5-story ‘raw and rugged’ waves (SF Gate)

Massive waves arrive but a Mavericks contest is a no-go (The Mercury News)

Despite really big waves, no Mavericks surf contest this week (San Luis Obispo News)

Etc.

Surfline’s Marcus Sanders had the day’s best wrap (read here!). He was there, trying to corral surfers for interviews etc. and had a first-person view on the day. Let’s read a smidge?

And the spectral buoy readings would’ve never said in a million years that Lenny was one of the first to paddle and shred at 10am, or that he was joined by a crew of other young Hawaiians, including Nathan Florence, Billy Kemper, Koa Rothman, Danny Fuller and Torrey Meister, who were in the lineup from dawn to dusk, bobbing around on a little boat in between making giant drops and/or taking serious beatings alongside a solid-and-growing local crew.

Oh it was wild, and maybe the World Surf League was correct in not running but when some of the world’s best big wave surfers are out putting on a show and the world’s media is starving to witness the “biggest swell event in 10 years” doesn’t it beg for… an real, honest explanation?  Maybe their model was right but… don’t you think the governing body of professional surfing would have tried to get ahead of the story a bit?

Or market it as an “expression session?”

Or have a make-shift contest where people vote at home for who went the biggest?

Or anything other than looking like Chickens of the Sea?