In explosive first, Kanoa Igarashi compared to Duke Kahanamoku: “The young Japanese surfer exudes the same statesmanlike qualities as the Hawaiian who first believed surfing could be an Olympic sport!”

Reincarnation.

Exciting times to be a surfer. The most exciting in history, perhaps, or at least since the great Duke Kahanamoku strode the earth nearly a decade ago. More people enjoying the pastime of kings since ever before. An Olympic birth just over the horizon. Our own Duke Kahanamoku reborn as an extremely handsome Japanese by way of Huntington Beach statesman named Kanoa Igarashi.

The young-ish surfer was recently profiled on Australia’s ABC News and the comparison between Kahanamoku and Igarashi was obviously striking.

Igarashi will be the same age as Duke Kahanamoku was at his first Olympics, but it’s not the only thing they share.

The young Japanese surfer exudes the same statesmanlike qualities as the Hawaiian who first believed surfing could be an Olympic sport.

“You know, this is a huge moment, I’m sure not just for me but I can speak on behalf of all the other surfers we’re going to feel pressure that we’ve never felt before,” he said.

“You have Brazilians, you have Australians, you have Americans all feeling pressure from their country and we are all really proud to represent our flag.

“But there’s something about it being in Japan and I feel like in a way I am representing our country to the world of surfing, and also representing surfing to the Olympics.

“So, in a way, I feel I have a lot on my hands,” he says, “but this is what I feel like I was born to do.”

Very cool. Igarashi also talks about his new megaphone and butterflies in his blood.

Read the rest here.


Renee Gracie, former BFF of EJC.

Blood Feud: “Australia’s squirt queen” Renee Gracie roasts former world #25 surfer Ellie-Jean Coffey for a lack of explicit content on XXX-website and says, “She looks nothing like she does in her photos… I don’t understand how she continues to get away with it.”

“She doesn’t give a damn… She doesn’t care. She just wants people to spend money."

Echoing the claims of adult entertainment fans who complained of price gouging and a lack of explicit content on world number 25 surfer Ellie-Jean Coffey’s XXX channel shortly after it was launched, former pal Renee Gracie has accused EJ of bring the industry into “disrepute”. 

Speaking to Australia’s The Daily Telegraph, Gracie, whose full-service menu has been banned from Instagram and Twitter, said EJ promised XXX but delivered PG.

“She doesn’t give a damn… She doesn’t care. She just wants people to spend money… I said to her ‘there’s no point collaborating together if we’re not putting similar content up online’… It’s hard enough to get fans to respect you and trust you in this industry. It’s not just her reputation, it’s all the women in the industry she is affecting without knowing it.”

Gracie told The Daily Telegraph that because, unlike her, EJ don’t sex on camera, fans have become terribly upset. 

“I show and do everything. She does not. And when we met, she looks nothing like she does in her photos. I don’t understand how she continues to get away with it. And nothing has been done about it.”

In the story, Gracie also revealed they pair fell out after she refused to collaborate on a video shoot with EJ. 

Four months ago, if you remember, Gracie was photographed frolicking with EJ at a Gold Coast nightclub.

Gracie, who is a retired V8 Supercars driver (forty-eight starts, no wins) and who says she’s made almost two-mill from her Only Fans site, “was spotted groping her blonde companion’s chest, while Ellie-Jean closed her eyes in apparent ecstasy. Ellie-Jean, who is openly bisexual, was also seen bending over a table while Renee danced close to her bottom.”

EJ, a former world twenty-five on the WSL’s qualifying series for women, caused much tabloid sorrow in 2019 when she was the subject of a “lewd ambush” by the author of the best-selling biography of prime minister Bob Hawke. 

A terrible episode.


Art: Comrade KVF
Art: Comrade KVF

Listen: Unsinkable Project Ibelli buoys weary Surf Journalist overcome by doubt, despair; Gives him the power to denounce iconic Gerry Lopez!

Faith, restored!

I will be very honest. Heck, I always am, with you. When Project Ibelli, launched just over a week ago, hit nearly half of its funding goal after only three days, I thought, “We’ve got this. We’ve actually got this.”

The audacious plan, if you recall, was to crowdfund a sticker, then a message, on the nose Comrade Caio Ibelli’s surfboard for the Newcastle Cup event in order to send a message to surfing’s vested interests. Its billionaire co-Waterpeople of the Year and private equity firms.

This is The People™’s game.

It belongs to us.

Except then, we got close to the beginning of that Newcastle Cup and still nearly half funded and then the hooter sounded and still only half funded.

An overwhelming depressing washed over me.

We had failed.

I had failed.

And carrying this profound sense of failure, I shuffled into Album Surfboard’s podcast studio.

David Lee Scales looked at me like I was dumb.

“What is your problem?” he asked.

“We lost.” I answered.

And then he went on a tear, preaching and prancing about how this is not just a one-off, how we will get Caio his money whether it be by Day 2 of the Newcastle Cup or Day 4 of the Margaret River Cup. That his is a movement and only the beginning of that movement.

Etc.

How could I have had such little faith.

So buoyed was I that I was able to denounce Gerry Lopez at the end of the episode.

Listen here.


The skipper in happier days. | Photo: 9News

Australian fisherman loses livelihood and is fined $20,000 for taking selfies with two dead Great White sharks caught in his nets!

If further proof was necessary of the sanctity of the Great White Shark, and I doubt it is, well here y’go.

A little over a week ago, a Western Australian judge gave hell to an Albany deckhand who posted photos of himself surrounded by the carcasses of two Great Whites that had been caught in the boat he was crewing on’s nets.

Tyrone Leigh Harding, who is thirty four, pleaded guilty to one count of taking a protected fish in April 2019 after he and his skipper James Stewart Tindall pulled in the two Great Whites after they became tangled in their gill net in April, 2019.

The judge suspended Harding’s fishing license for one year and fined him twelve-and-a-half-gees. Magistrate Dianne Scaddan described the pair posing with the Great Whites as “barbaric” and “vulgar”, two hitherto unknown offences.

The skipper, James Tindall, who fronted court on April 1, has been fined twenty gees and had his fishing license suspended for his transgression; a little rich, I think, considering both animals were dead before they were pulled on deck.

Fisheries officers were put on the case after someone reported finding severed sharks in a nearby river one month later.

Cops got onto Harding, searched his joint, found the jaws, the photos and the videos.

Harding’s defence lawyer said Harding and Tindall were three-and-a-half clicks off the coast when the Great Whites got caught in the nets.

Cutting the net away from the Whites, he said, would’ve risked the crew’s safety and the net would’ve drifted into the ocean, environmental nightmare etc, so the pair dragged ‘em in, cut ‘em up, souvenired the fangs.


Team Wright after another remarkable world title win. | Photo: @tylerwright

Woman charged with a staggering 749 counts of stealing for a total of $1.5 million from two-time world surfing champion Tyler Wright and brothers, Owen and Mikey.

Three-quarters of the loot spent on gambling and poker machines, “while the rest of it was wasted"

A fifty-tree-year-old woman from the NSW South Coast has been hit with 749 counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception with police alleging she stole more than $1.5 million from Tyler Wright and brothers Owen and Mikey,

Shane Maree Hatton, a family friend of the Wrights, although one must now presume that friendship has become somewhat strained, was a bookkeeper for the Wright’s plumbing biz.

When the kids started to rake in the sponsor cash, Hatton took on their finances, too.

“There is a trend of family friends and relatives, who are less than qualified, managing large amounts of money and they can’t resist the temptation of taking some of the money for themselves,” the State Crime Command Director, Detective Chief Superintendent Darren Bennett told The Daily Telegraph.

Red flags went up when celeb agent Nick Fordham, who handles Tyler’s sponsorship deals, saw the books, and noticed the balance was a little lower than expected.

He called the cops, they got the fraud squad in, and the woman was arrested.

“They have a limited window for earning so they need to protect themselves,” Detective Bennett said. “The first thing they need to do is employ reputable companies, not family friends to handle their careers. They need to get contracts, and with legal advice. Then they need to take an interest in their money day to day and the movement of money in their bank accounts.”

Cops allege the woman spent $1.2 million on gambling and poker machines “while the rest of the money was wasted.”

Which brings to mind the wonderful George Best quote, “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.”

Bookkeepers, accountants, whatever you want to call ‘em, are notorious for sticking their fingers in the honey pot, although their lifespans can be shortened considerably depending on the victims.

One man who ripped off Andy and Bruce Irons for a mill, as well as another thirty or so people for a total of fifty-mill, ended up at the bottom of a canyon after a mysterious car accident.

Police said the day was “very windy.”