World number sixteen gives vulnerable adult learner a little wet-rub during pre-contest warm-up.

Depending upon which side of the fence you occupy, surfer or VAL, this clip will fill you either with horror or energetically nodding your head in agreement.

The background, if necessary.

Griffin Colapinto, twenty-one, from San Clemente, the world number sixteen, is freesurfing at Manly beach, in Australia, in prep for the qualifying event there. Races down the line, second hit, spins, sees a VAL attempting to takeoff as he comes around, lightens his feet, gently takes him out.

Pretty standard fare for a city beachbreak, armies of VALS all of whom appear to’ve been struck blind and deaf.

Who knows where they’ll appear next?

Taking off down the line? Ejecting above your head?

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9kFTUMnRpQ/

Griffin wasn’t thrilled and dressed his IG post with a Dane Reynolds quote, taken from an excellent Stab magazine interview. 

“Do you ever feel like people who paddle around you cluelessly aren’t good at surfing and can’t possibly be intelligent?”

The response was mixed.

From the VAL army,

franmerurqui It has nothing to do with intelligence and I don’t think it’s right to make fun of a learner’s mistake. We’re all having fun!

bcolapinto
Some surfing stupidity…. So, what you are saying is that you were not intelligent when you were learning? In fact, because you are the pro, I believe you should have the control, avoid that clash and explain to him what he did wrong … I don’t know what is happening with surfing nowadays… A lot of idiots in the water..

bbilro
Stupidest Person Award for the dumbest and riskiest acts. Griffin Colapinto

joelchapman
Pro surfer says “people who aren’t good at surfing can’t possibly be intelligent”. 🤔 If anything is @kookoftheday worthy, it’s this post. Not the surfer who you ran over.

Then a bunch of hits from pro groupies, and a few who don’t buy the pro surfer entitlement thing.

taz0.2
Not everyone dropped out of school, lived in a beachside mansion, and had daddy buy him surfboards. Odds are that most people in the lineup are just doing their best to have fun. Don’t get upset when someone can’t levitate out of the water to get out of the way because Griffin Colapinto decided that he wanted to speed down the line and air rev over someone. You’re a good kid, Griff. Don’t be a prick.

(One clever follower wrote, “You mean the Coffin brothers.”)

The most prescient, of course, was this.

sigg1980
Is it just me.. or.. are there a lack of pros on here responding? Lmao.. Dane layin low on this one.. “sorry this is your potential PR nightmare not mine”.. prob did agree with Cola in private though. Lmao

How do you play this?

PR diz or VAL got his just desserts?

Surfing equals green in modern corporate language.

Doesn’t it feel, I don’t know…intrusive… to see the word “surf” used in advertising?

It’s as gross as a CFO throwing double shakas as he wobbles through the office making his requisite, self-centered small talk?

And, what copywriter wrote that Jeep garbage?

Actually, knowing the way it goes, that copywriter probably had a perfectly sane idea that got squashed and revised through countless “alignment” meetings by vice-presidents with finance degrees to the point where we’re at: Surfing sand. Surfing streets. Surfing conference calls. Surfing the open office. Surfing the gibberish I type on a sticky note so I appear productive (which is much more important than actually being productive in the open office).

There’s a Beckett-like absurdity to corporate garbage language, and laughing at the serious use of utterly stupid buzzwords was getting me through my Monday, until I saw a stack of trade magazines in the trash.

The magazine cover was clouds, sky, airplane. The usual for one of these trade rags that industry “leaders” swap at conferences without ever reading.

(The irony that what I ghostwrite for work goes in mags like these that are immediately thrown away is not lost on me; and I try to think of it like my own sand mandala.)

The headline caught me.

All caps, sans serif, like what Apple was using ten years ago: SURFING FOR EFFICIENCY.

The article informs its one reader (me) that “air-wake surfing for efficiency” shows “significant promise but substantial challenges,” leaping ahead optimistically with news that Airbus and Boeing tested how to save gas by flying planes in formation. The writer toots that, “Commercial aircraft would fly in extended formation, up to one nautical mile apart, on what the industry prefers to call ‘cooperative trajectories.’”

However!

Despite the fact that “the physics of wake surfing are on a firm footing, there are many technical and operational questions still to be answered.”

And then there’s a good bit of the article devoted to pumping the brakes on air-wake surfing, specifically because “only the trail aircraft sees a fuel saving” so they’d need to work out “who gets preference.”

But that doesn’t really matter, because the article accomplishes its only point, which is to tick the “sustainability” box.

And it does so while co-opting the new corporate meaning that surfing equals green along the way.

Which leads me to wonder: What surf terms could be turned into buzzwords that office people use seriously?

Tell you what.

We’ll brainstorm on this messaging, leverage our collective learnings, maybe take the conversation offline, and circle back next week.

Who owns the record for the world's shortest sporting retirement? Sugar Ray Leonard or Carissa Moore?

Shortly, before Christmas the four-time and reigning world champion of surfing, Hawaiian Carissa Moore, shocked fans when she announced she’d be taking a year off the tour.

“I have dedicated the last ten years of my life to competing at the highest level and want to continue to do that well into my thirties,” said the twenty seven year old. “This break is a press refresh so that I can come back to the tour happier and more excited than ever in 2021.”

The announcement came as Hurley’s new owners Bluestar Alliance were winding down their vaunted surf team, the best ever assembled, unable to see that the sponsored surfer is the magic elf of the industry, paid hundreds of thousands, millions, for their ability to influence sales and define brands.

If you had a termination clause in your contract you were gone.

Filipe scraped under the wire with a contract until 2024; Kolohe Andino’s was good until 2022.

Carissa, however, started appearing in IG posts without Hurley stickers, even with a contract reported to be until 2025. The ol Olympic Clause, which forces surfers to ride logo less boards in the games, was a convenient deal-breaker, according to our source.

“This Carissa thing ain’t what they’re saying,” said the source. “She was gone via notice at the end of the last year while still basking in her world title glory. And mightily pissed how it was handled. Now they’re paying her and Eli Hanneman more than they were before. It’s fucking crazy.”

And now, despite the pre-Christmas announcement and the need to refresh, find happiness etc, Carissa has flown a dozen hours across the Pacific to Australia to compete in the Sydney Surf Pro.

As I said, a mystery, and, almost, the world’s shortest sporting retirement.

(Sugar Ray Leonard retired five times during his career, once for a week.)