A three-event surf-off between Leonardo Fioravanti and Mikey Wright!

In a decision so sage and so wonderful it could be registered in an updated version of the Hebrew Bible, the WSL’s SVP, Tours & Head of Competition, Pat O’Connell, has ordered one of the two injury wildcards to be split between the Australian Mikey Wright and the Italian Leonardo Fioravanti.

The announcement from nineties superstar Pat, the former world #11 who has wrinkles on his face like cat whiskers and who once told Surfer he wanted to be friends with everybody on tour, reads,

“We have a unique situation with the WSL men’s wildcards for the 2020 season. After reviewing our criteria, as well as the independent medical board assessments, we believe both Leonardo Fioravanti and Mikey Wright have equitable cases for the second 2020 wildcard. After working with our event partners and speaking to both surfers, we have arranged for both Leo and Mikey to compete in the first three CT events of 2020 – Gold Coast, Bells Beach, and Margaret River. The surfer who finishes highest on the rankings across that opening Australian leg will receive the second WSL wildcard for the remainder of the 2020 season.”

The first wildcard, of course, goes to the Brazilian Adriano de Souza, surfing’s forgotten 2015 world champ and Brazil’s first Pipeline Master, whose title was allowed to marinate for roughly a dozen hours before Kelly Slater revealed his Lemoore wavepool.

(Reminisce here.)

The 2020 tour, therefore, contains these surfers.

2019 Top 22 CT:
Italo Ferreira (BRA)
Gabriel Medina (BRA)
Jordy Smith (ZAF)
Filipe Toledo (BRA)
Kolohe Andino (USA)
Kanoa Igarashi (JPN)
John John Florence (HAW)
Kelly Slater (USA)
Owen Wright (AUS)
Jeremy Flores (FRA)
Julian Wilson (AUS)
Seth Moniz (HAW)
Michel Bourez (FRA)
Ryan Callinan (AUS)
Jack Freestone (AUS)
Griffin Colapinto (USA)
Caio Ibelli (BRA)
Wade Carmichael (AUS)
Adrian Buchan (AUS)
Conner Coffin (USA)
Peterson Crisanto (BRA)
Yago Dora (BRA)

2019 Top 10 QS (minus double qualifiers from CT):
Frederico Morais (PRT)
Jadson Andre (BRA)
Matthew McGillivray (ZAF)
Jack Robinson (AUS)
Alex Ribeiro (BRA)
Miguel Pupo (BRA)
Ethan Ewing (AUS)
Connor O’Leary (AUS)
Deivid Silva (BRA)
Morgan Cibilic (AUS)

WSL Wildcards:
Adriano de Souza (BRA)
TBD: Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA) / Mikey Wright (AUS)

Surfing, like all forms of entertainment, need villains, and because Medina is as good a villain as he is a rider of waves the sport is infinitely better for his presence.

Gabe Medina has comboed my mind.

On one hand, from my distant view up here in the corner bleachers of the Pacific Northwest, Gabe is a deeply unlovable athlete, and this notion was amplified after watching his palsy video chat last spring with Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro (who recently told a reporter “You have a terribly homosexual face”).

I began every contest in the 2019 WSL season hoping to see Gabe make an early exit.

But, here’s the thing.

At some point, usually round three, I’d slap my knee and curse and start willing Gabe to win.

Why? Two reasons.

First, the WSL’s Wall of Positive Noise is a vanilla-scented scourge upon pro surfing, and Medina’s Dark Arts no-fucks-given approach to the game is attractive by comparison, and thus becomes my own cudgel, my own counternarrative, against the WSL’s endlessly vapid presentation.

Surfing, like all forms of entertainment, need villains, and because Medina is as good a villain as he is a rider of waves the sport is infinitely better for his presence.

Second, Medina, for my money, is simply the best all-around surfer in the world.

Not every day. Not every break.

But he is on most days, at most breaks, and pro surfing works best when the crown sits atop the head of the most deserving contender. So throughout the early rounds of the just-finished Pipeline Masters, and during the opening minutes of the final, I was pulling for Gabe.

Then something happened.

I can’t recall exactly what it was — maybe Italo Ferreira’s first tube-to-air left, or the contrast between Charlie Medina’s scowling puss and the gleeful flag-waving Team Italo cheering section; maybe it was just my own need, at this hyper-clenched moment in time, for lightness to prevail over dark — but I swung over to Italo’s side, and was swept away and became genuinely emotional at the sight of this tiny Brazilian all red-eyed and crying as he left the water, our new world champion.

Days later, it still feels great. I’ll likely make the same Faustian bargain with Gabe in 2020.

But for the moment, the joy of surfing, like Italo himself, is a clear winner.

(Editor’s note: This post is an abridged version of Matt Warshaw’s brilliant, and brilliantly succinct, Sunday Joint, a weekly email to all Encyclopedia of Surfing subscribers. Three bucks a month to join the club, can you believe?)

Saved by surf leash tourniquets expertly applied by pal…

Earlier today, reports from Santa Barbara that a surfer had been choppered into a local hospital after being hit by a shark while surfing on Santa Rosa Island.

A hit on the leg, a chopper ride to Santa Babs’ Cottage Hospital for surgery.

No word on the sorta shark.

Now, according to the other surfer in the water, Jeremy Howard, the surfer’s name is Adam Coons, the shark was a fifteen-foot Great White, not altogether uncommon in these parts, and after Coons made it back to his boat Howard used surf leashes as tourniquets.

From his IG.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6XJMGUA2tB/

Tourniquets?

Feels like everywhere I look I’m reading, hearing about how important it is, more than CPR even, to know how to stop blood flow from a major wound.

Two weeks ago, it was the surfing doc Jon Cohen and his classes on how to use tourniquets after a shark attack.

According to Cohen, if you can get the de-limbed person to the beach and apply a tourniquet above the wound so no blood can spurt out the hole you’re good.

Last night it was a book about the war photographer Tim Hetherington, who would’ve survived mortar shrapnel in his thigh if his buddy knew how to staunch the blood flow.

Today, this.

Buy your thirty-buck tourniquet, here, chuck it in the car etc.