I don’t think that VALs are Enemies of the
People, per se, but usually the VAL lack of self-awareness makes
for rough exchanges in the water and/or on land. Lack of
self-awareness is a nasty bit of business wherever it’s found. I
was standing in a crosswalk a few days ago, for example, with the
crosswalk light blinking, waiting to guide my daughter across when
a car blazed right through. Of course I kicked his door as hard as
I could sending him to a screeching stop. He stuck his blubbery
head out the window, shouting “Do you have a problem?” I shouted
back many swears that HE broke cherished crosswalk RULES at which
point he angrily squealed away.
The man in the car was not necessarily a VAL but his attitude
was metaphorical. VALs heedlessly break our cherished rules then
don’t care. They don’t know not to care and don’t care to learn
etc.
Which is what makes contemporary artist Tom Sachs’ movie How to
Learn How to Surf so pleasant. It is not a movie about how to learn
to surf or how to surf but how to learn how to surf.
Very self aware.
Enjoy.
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Pip knocked one out in the final, second wave after a
cute tuberide. With a mid-nine and then a blowtail the final
followed the pattern of asymmetrical heats. Jordy was comboed in
the first five minutes and never looked like threatening. Filipe
alluded to personal problems in the immediate post-final presser,
admitting it had been a “really hard year mentally.”
Oi Rio Pro Finals Day: “Filipe Toledo
smashes world; untouchable in performance surf!”
Jordy Smith makes final cameo, Gabriel Medina sad,
John John's yanked knee finishes his Brazil campaign…
Sleep deprivation makes cats say crazy things.
I woke up this morning thinking I might have over-egged the
omelette last night re: Brazil but after watching a very, very
anti-climactic Finals Day I feel very much soothed because Barton
just wrapped it saying it was one of the “greatest events in pro
surfing history.”
Yeah, but nah. Really, really one-sided affairs with Pip
smashing all and sundry in surf half the size of yesterday.
Twenty two minutes to go and Filipe had a sixteen-point total
against Fred Morais, for example. In the ensuing twenty-two
minutes, in mostly closeouts with the odd “cute little barrel”,
Fred racked up a three to answer back. Pip’s quarter-final against
Kanoa looked the closest result on paper but was nowhere near, in
real life. Igarashi found a one-pointer to back up a six. Pip
smashed him with an eleven-point total.
It was shades of D-bah this year where the Finals Day was a
major let down.
Why the unseemly haste to finish?
Plenty of days left in the waiting period and another swell
cycle on the radar. Not enough scoreable waves in the heat was the
major problem.
And no John John.
With JJF and Slater out I felt depressed.
Gabe Medina also very sad after being knocked by Kolohe Andino,
funky little right hand semi-closeouts being not to his taste. He
wanted “more fair opportunity”.
Fair call, yes?
Let the historical record state that this is the second time
this year the call to run in sub-par surf has diminished the
Champ’s prospects. Kelly had the Tour wrapped around his little
finger for 20 years, calling off the Volcom Fiji Pro, June 10,
2012, to halt the momentum of a rampaging Medina and surf against
him the next day in conditions that suited him more.
We remember Kelly.
Why can’t Medina be afforded a similar amount of latitude to
call the shots?
Who has your favourite entourage on Tour? With Ross Williams
disappeared from history I like John Johns minimalist one with his
manager Brandon Wasserman, who looks like an extra from Interpol*.
Jordy seems to be flying solo in Brazil and Gabe and Pip are obv’s
rocking mega entourages on home turf.
Christian Fletcher deserves royalty payments today, if the
straight wheelie air with or without a little tail tweak had been
patented in 1989. Kolohe dropped one first in his win against
Medina. Followed it straight up with a turn and rotation and a
grinning death stare claim with an obvious contempt in his
demeanour. That was a winning wave so the strong-arm tactic worked
but where does he go next if he wants to make an emotional
statement? A horses head in Pritamo’s bed?
Jords got the walk through in his QF with John’s dicky knee and
had the semi against Kolohe wrapped up in the first five minutes.
One cute little tuberide expertly threaded for an eight and change,
one lofted alley-oop for a mid-seven and Kolohe was gone. He tried
a little fightback with a slob grabbed rotation but all the
insouciance of the quarter-final against Medina had evaporated into
the crowd.
Christian Fletcher deserves royalty payments today, if the
straight wheelie air with or without a little tail tweak had been
patented in 1989. Kolohe dropped one first in his win against
Medina. Followed it straight up with a turn and rotation and a
grinning death stare claim with an obvious contempt in his
demeanour. That was a winning wave so the strong-arm tactic worked
but where does he go next if he wants to make an emotional
statement?
A horses head in Pritamo’s bed?
Pip knocked one out in the final, second wave after a cute
tuberide. With a mid-nine and then a blowtail the final followed
the pattern of asymmetrical heats. Jordy was comboed in the first
five minutes and never looked like threatening. Filipe alluded to
personal problems in the immediate post-final presser, admitting it
had been a “really hard year mentally.”
As a rebound from the debacle at the Box and with J-Bay ahead
there couldn’t really be a better place for Toledo to be. Except it
feels like deja vu all over again. Toledo untouchable in
performance surf, the needle not really moving in heavy reef surf
and Teahupoo and Pipeline ahead.
The best heat of the day was the semi between Carissa Moore and
Steph Gilmore, not because the surfing was anything insane but
because it was a tight contest that came down to a last wave Steph
rode on the buzzer.
“Did she get the score Barton?” asked Bricknell.
“I feel, no,” said Barton trusting the best gut instinct in the
booth. Which was correct.
Apart from wearing the insult from Kolohe’s grinning death stare
it was an easy day for judges. Carissa bombed a set wave in the
womens final, Sally tagged an end section after a clean entry and
exit from a hollow section. The precedent for paying end section
hits was well established which made for an obvious high-ball score
on a winning wave.
Sally and Steph show the energy in Australian pro surfing is
with the women.
Here is Filipe Toledo’s victory speech, never delivered, as
written by his alternative speech writer, the noted Russia expert
Lucky Al, who snapped off the fin on my surfboard I lent him. T
Take it away Filipe: “Thank you, thank you! Wow, you guys and
girls! Wow, wow, wow! Thank you so very much. I am so happy and
honoured to be here. This place, Saquarema, is so amazing. So
amazing and beautiful! And you people of Saquarema are amazing and
beautiful! The waves today were great, okay, but yesterday they
were even better. Yesterday they were great! Did you see me beat
Kelly Slater? Haha. This is a great surf spot! Thank you for
letting us have this contest at your surf spot, surfers and people
of Saquarema. I want to come back here all the time and surf and
hang out. This is such a great place. Thank you, my fellow
competitors. Jordy, please try to do better next time. Haha, it’s a
joke. Kelly, you don’t have a next time. It’s not a joke. Smiley
face. Gabriel Medina, I’m going to smash you in the face, this year
is mine. Haha! Let’s party and have a good time everybody! Yeah
woooooo!!!!
~Crowd goes wild~.
*The New York post-punk band, not the international cop
organisation.
Oi Rio Pro Women’s Final Results:
1 – Sally Fitzgibbons (AUS) 14.64
2 – Carissa Moore (HAW) 12.57
Oi Rio Pro Women’s Semifinal Results:
SF 1: Sally Fitzgibbons (AUS) 7.63 DEF. Keely Andrew (AUS) 4.40
SF 2: Carissa Moore (HAW) 15.30 DEF. Stephanie Gilmore (AUS)
14.83
Oi Rio Pro Women’s Quarterfinal Results:
QF 1: Sally Fitzgibbons (AUS) 14.17 DEF. Lakey Peterson (USA)
1.20
QF 2: Keely Andrew (AUS) 7.24 DEF. Silvana Lima (BRA) 6.46
QF 3: Carissa Moore (HAW) 12.33 DEF. Tatiana Weston-Webb (BRA)
12.04
QF 4: Stephanie Gilmore (AUS) 10.90 DEF. Courtney Conlogue (USA)
10.66
Oi Rio Pro Men’s Final Results:
1 – Filipe Toledo (BRA) 18.04
2 – Jordy Smith (ZAF) 8.43
Oi Rio Pro Men’s Semifinal Results:
SF 1: Filipe Toledo (BRA) 16.00 DEF. Frederico Morais (PRT)
10.30
SF 2: Jordy Smith (ZAF) 16.06 DEF. Kolohe Andino (USA) 10.40
Oi Rio Pro Men’s Quarterfinal Results:
QF 1: Filipe Toledo (BRA) 11.00 DEF. Kanoa Igarashi (JPN) 7.57
QF 2: Frederico Morais (PRT) 13.17 DEF. Julian Wilson (AUS)
11.83
QF 3: Jordy Smith (ZAF) DEF. John John Florence (HAW) INJ
QF 4: Kolohe Andino (USA) 13.10 DEF. Gabriel Medina (BRA) 12.00
I am not a sleeper-inner by nature but, for
some reason, I cannot wake up early enough for this contest. Well,
better late than never. Pottz just said there are “cute little
barrels” for this perfect finals day. “Days like this you dream of
being a free surfer…” he just said.
What did we miss?
Filipe beat Igarashi in Quarter 1
Fred beat Julian in Quarter 2
John John has dipped out due injury, sending Jordy through.
Kolohe beat Medina and I will go watch that replay now but after
the rest of this fabulous day.
The World Surf League’s paid post advertising
the upcoming Freshwater Pro has been playing non-stop in my
Instagram feed and I now hate Jack White. Or, not Jack White per
se. That was a mean statement and over the top. Rather I hate The
Raconteurs. The song used to advertise the Freshwater Pro is
obnoxious and it makes me recall how I’d never really liked a The
Raconteurs song while liking very many from Jack himself or Jack
paired with Meg.
Anyhow, the comments on the paid post are very funny with 7 in
10 cursing the World Surf League for cancelling Trestles and/or
Cloudbreak and/or Mundaka. One, in particular, snagged my
attention. It was not mean or hateful but wise and interesting.
@no_ocean_required tagged both the League and Kelly Slater
asking, “As this is freshwater event, how about a freshwater
wildcard from the Great Lakes?”
And as far as cultural appropriation goes, I believe
@no_ocean_required makes a fine point.
We are all evolved, aren’t we? And especially Kelly Slater.
Evolved to the point of shunning the shaka on the grounds of
cultural appropriation and I think it is only right for him to
listen here. Oh, of course he should look beyond the Great Lakes to
Munich’s river surfers and other tidal bore surfers and should
probably open it up to wake surfers as well, seeing that loud
machines create both wake surfer waves and Surf Ranch ones too.
A fine point entirely. I’d be more interested tuning into the
Freshwater Pro Freshwater Trials than the main event.
But what about you?
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
That would have been a ten. But it also
exposed John's weakness. Going big in the air has caused serious
injury to the champ. High ankle sprain, ruptured cruciate ligament.
At 20 years younger than Kelly it's hard to see John lasting into
his thirties with the injury toll already mounting. All that scar
tissue has a way of catching up to you. WSL
Oi Rio Pro, Day Three: “John John Florence
yanks out knee, Kelly Slater loses beautifully!”
And the power shifts from the anglocentric world to
the Latin…
Since when did Brazil become the new heavy water
location on Tour?
Is this something that has been happening under our noses for
years and only a seasonal shift deeper into winter and a location
move to Saquarema has unlocked?
Can one of our Brazilian experts here please educate?
Barrinha today at times looked like North Point, Backdoor,
that air wave in Reunion
from Modern Collective and one of those
Mexican right points in Barra. A wave outside the limits of most
recreational surfers.
Medina, as golden light streamed through the Igreja de Nossa
Senhora de Nazareth, was the only goofyfooter skilled enough to
tame Barrinha this afternoon. We’ve seen more angry double overhead
waves in Brazil in the last 48 hours than the last two years in
Tahiti.
It is strange, it is bizarre, it is true. Time for a
reassessment.
Did I miss the hype for the Slater/Toledo super heat today?
Surfing’s official historian, Matt Warshaw, alluded to it but I
thought going into it WSL had underplayed it. There were no leaked
videos of Slater “praising “ Toledo as the best small-wave surfer
on earth in the lead-up, no sly trash talk at all, far as I could
see. Just a huge crowd (with the average person a little more out
of shape than we might have expected, if I could be provocative)
and a military escort for Filipe to make it to the beach.
As an opening heat at Barrinha it couldn’t have been better.
Cross-shore, backwashy, devilishly tricky double -overhead
barrelling wedges. Sebastian Inlet on a triple helping of growth
hormone. There was nothing “relatable” about it. Which usually
means Kelly Slater will make the insane happen.
He did, he did.
But first, Filipe sliced a wave and landed a greased rotation,
on the bolts, as they say and all observers thought “That’s it,
Kelly’s cooked, good night old man etc etc”.
If you’d said at the start of the year Kelly would fight back
with a double-overhead, technical tube-ride, as heavy as Backdoor,
with a degree of difficulty off the charts, you would have been
mocked, ridiculed, denounced as an enemy of the people, called a
stooge, a nut job, a fantasist, a WSL stool pigeon or much
worse.
That, though, is what happened.
Kelly bested Filipe’s generous 9.17 with a 9.50. Game on.
What I find most staggering about the 47-year0-old version of
Kelly is his willingness and ability to absorb punishment. At Pipe
last year Kelly took beating after beating. The consequences, even
for young studs, are not trifling. Head injuries, pelvises snapped
in half, arms ripped out of shoulder sockets, knee ligaments
snapped, grave surgeons delivering bad news about broken backs.
At Barrinha he repeated the formula.
A free-fall drop with the board fluttering around a cascading
section yielded only a five. Filipe held his nerve and calmly
slotted a set wave and that was it. You got the feeling Kelly was
only one more wave from a ten but a hellaciously long time stranded
in the shorebreak while sets strafed the line-up killed his
chances.
A very significant heat. He won ugly yesterday and lost
beautiful today.
That heat made the following heats look very pedestrian by
comparison. Kanoa, Fred Morais and Julian all besting opponents
without grabbing Barrinha by the neck. Julian admitting in the
presser, the rambunctious lineup made him feel like a kook.
Forty-six-minute over-lapping heats in heavy lineups are tailor
made for John John Florence. Time to relax and surf. Like Kelly he
took multiple chances on waves that looked like closeouts, were
closeouts, but could have been ten-point rides. Four attempts for
four non-makes.
Wade Carmichael refrained from catching a wave in that time.
One clean make for a high seven then a backflip attempt, maybe
not a backflip but something else, clean and lofted, which he
landed but fell on. That would have been a ten. But it also exposed
John’s weakness. Going big in the air has caused serious injury to
the champ. High ankle sprain, ruptured cruciate ligament. At 20
years younger than Kelly it’s hard to see John lasting into his
thirties with the injury toll already mounting. All that scar
tissue has a way of catching up to you.
It happened on a big set wave. As Kolohe said, the potential to
do the biggest airs ever seen was present. Huge wedge sections,
oncoming breeze, massive crowd on the beach. A very tempting
scenario. John put it up into space and then let it go. He said
later it was the initial impact as he hit the take-off ramp that
caused a serious pain on the previously injured knee. That does not
sound good, indicating instability in the knee joint. He limped up
the beach with a hang-dog look and ten minutes to go.
Ten minutes for the Avoca Jesus to get a low six. Ten long
minutes. He spiked a small wave for a small score. A minute and
fifty and a single set wave detonated on the melon. Board snapped
in two and Jesus was left gesticulating for, who?….God? A jet ski?
Either could not rescue him.
Gabby came out pricking and prodding and jabbing at smaller
waves under the gaze of an ashen-faced Charlie. Unlike Jordy he
could not stick airs. “He’ll go to turns” I thought. I love the way
he shifts gears in a heat. A worshipful crowd bathed in the holy
light, Bourez surfed like a drunken prophet, like the ancient king
in a Rumi poem who has “let go of the reins” in the tavern.
The crowd surged in behind Medina and you could almost feel the
power shift from the anglocentric world to the Latin.The energy
flowed through the ether into homes thousands of miles away. It was
a moment of pure Hegelian history: a new form of life had
progressively undermined the old and had now replaced it.
The transition was almost complete. It’s up to Medina now to
join the circle tomorrow.
Oi Rio Pro Men’s Round of 16 (Round 4)
Results:
Heat 1: Filipe Toledo (BRA) 17.84 DEF. Kelly Slater (USA) 14.83
Heat 2: Kanoa Igarashi (JPN) 13.17 DEF. Joan Duru (FRA) 10.83
Heat 3: Frederico Morais (PRT) 12.83 DEF. Michael Rodrigues (BRA)
7.43
Heat 4: Julian Wilson (AUS) 14.00 DEF. Jesse Mendes (BRA) 13.60
Heat 5: John John Florence (HAW) 12.66 DEF. Wade Carmichael (AUS)
10.33
Heat 6: Jordy Smith (ZAF) 15.53 DEF. Griffin Colapinto (USA)
9.67
Heat 7: Kolohe Andino (USA) 14.07 DEF. Deivid Silva (BRA) 11.53
Heat 8: Gabriel Medina (BRA) 14.43 DEF. Michel Bourez (FRA)
9.27
Oi Rio Pro Men’s Quarterfinal Matchups:
QF 1: Filipe Toledo (BRA) vs. Kanoa Igarashi (JPN)
QF 2: Frederico Morais (PRT) vs. Julian Wilson (AUS)
QF 3: John John Florence (HAW) vs. Jordy Smith (ZAF)
QF 4: Kolohe Andino (USA) vs. Gabriel Medina (BRA)
