"When Kelly thinks about what is being done in his name and looks in the mirror, does he still see an environmentalist looking back at him?"
Ever since the looming Jeep Surf Ranch Pro stuck its head around the corner, sick notes and reasons of absence forms have been hitting WSL email addresses with the relentlessness of Qassam rockets bound for Ashkelon.
Julian Wilson, wanted to think about the Olympics for six weeks and there ain’t no chance he’s decamping to Tachi Palace and surfing the tank.
Jordy Smith, out, knee injury, although the six-three beast is no fan of the pool, says it’s “predictable” and “really not that exciting to the viewers after watching the tenth surfer go back into the barrel for another ten seconds.”
John John Florence, Kolohe Andino, Michel Bourez and gals Tyler Wright, Lakey Peterson, Bronte Macaulay, Macy Callaghan.
All out.
Brazil used to be the black sheep of the tour, injuries, apparently catastrophic before the contest repairing magically soon after.
After last year’s event, BeachGrit’s tour reporter Steve “Longtom” Shearer, jerkerd awake long enough to pull his head out of his pretzel bowl and write,
We’re five years into this thing now.
Five long years.
The gap between the rhetoric, that tubs were going to loose a tsunami of radical innovative surfing, and the reality, conservative surfing, is becoming clearer every day. It’s become what Orwell termed the “inadmissible fact.” It’s put us in upside down world, where Chris Cote, when he hears the train says, “ This never gets old” means “there’s something deeply wrong here but I can’t dare acknowledge it”.
Five years.
Can someone on the pro wavepool side of the argument explain to me why, given the basic repeatability of the wave, some new trick is not conceived, mastered and then executed to a stunned judging panel ala vert skating or snowboard half-pipe?
Wasn’t that the whole point?
On a recent post featuring the seven-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore at the tank, WSL fans wrote,
Snooze. Throw in the air section.
Most uninteresting event on tour. Every time I see this wave I keep scrolling.
Good for training, horrible for contest. RIP WSL.
Soooooooo booooring.
Same commentary on every wave… stick to mother ocean.
And so on.
**********
It’ll be six years, this December, when Kelly unveiled the tank, a miracle of technology and vision, a wave so perfect most thought it was a prank. Better than anything before it or, if flawless points are your thing, since.
It would be the lavishly tanned eleven-time world champ’s final legacy; his gift to surfing, a facsimile of Little Marley, the draining sandbottom right-hander that runs across Rainbow Bay.
And here we are, 2021, years after Kelly sold the biz to the WSL and besides the Lemoore prototype not a single Slater pool has been built.
The Israeli-German-Basque Wavegarden tech has flourished, fully functioning commercial pools in Melbourne, Switzerland, England, Brazil.
American Wave Machines has Texas and Japan tanks, more to follow.
Same with Tommy Lochtefeld’s Surf Loch, one under construction in Palm Springs, a few privates kicking around, more coming.
City Wave, the German bidder of stationary pools, notably represented by Shane Beschen in the US, has ‘em indoors, outdoors, in the US, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, France, Russia and Israel.
The closest a Slater pool has to its first commercial pool is a $1.2 billion development on on 510-hectares, or 1200 acres, of “highly constrained land” near the Queensland beach town of Coolum. The proposal includes a Surf Ranch wrapped in a 20,000-person stadium, a six-star eco-resort, restaurants, bars, a retail village and “an environmental education centre based on the site’s wetlands and nearby waterways.”
The WSL’s Andrew Stark said the local surfing community was “ecstatic and excited.”
It’s as far away from being built in 2021 as it was two years ago,
I sent Longtom to investigate in 2019.
I put boots on the ground at the site. I know this country very well. It’s in my blood. My people come from the Queensland cane swamps. They are Danes, Swedes, Sicilians.
Practical people.
They would understand the necessity of bulldozing the bush to make way for jobs. But I do not. The developer’s eye eludes me. I see trees and bush. Birds, insects, frogs. I feel sad that surfers will be the ones behind the bull-dozers, erasing this wildlife, this bush from history.
From what I can see though, although there is ambivalence, distrust and even hostility to the Coolum wave pool development, that is unlikely to stop the bulldozers.
The greenwashing on the project will be immense. Next level.
But I wonder, when Kelly thinks about what is being done in his name and looks in the mirror, does he still see an environmentalist looking back at him?
From a miracle conjured out of nowhere and greeted with universal acclaim to the tour’s most hated event and a wavepool tech used nowhere.
Why?
Why?
The Jeep Surf Ranch Pro starts this Friday and runs through Sunday.
Watching this WSL event at the Ranch is some what cool to see. Best of the best tearin it up. But there’s that competition feel that is lost. In all the other contests surfers are battling it out for priority, getting the right wave, etc. This event they are just waiting off their board in the water by themselves getting ready to jump on a “what’s expected” great wave. The excited feeling as a spectator is lost in all forms. The Ranch is a great innovation for training and fun, but for contest battles? Especially at the highest level? Not as much excitement as the other events. Just sayin.
Why? – Operant conditioning!
I’ve never been to America but Lemore sounds like a dog shit place for a surf trip. The fact u have such limited access to the waves in a nothing town not surprised some would rather stay home.
He should have built one in Kalgoorlie and then a casino attached. Could be the Australian version of Vegas.
They built it out there in the land of Meth and Methane because it’s private and secluded and when you think about it, they did a damned good job of keeping it all secret in a time when it’s impossible to keep anything secret.
Did you see how genuinely surprised Kelly was when he saw it for the first time?
It was even a surprise to him as it was to the rest of the world.
But yes, Las Vegas is the obvious location for a wave pool like that.
If you could set it up so the party crowd could be drinking and bodysurfing and splashing around at the end, it would fit right in with Vegas’ pool culture.
Or maybe one in Dubai. They have the money and the need.
A Wavegarden Cove or Waco tech pool in Vegas makes so much sense I’m surprised one isn’t being built right now, post-pandemic. But a Kelly pool doesn’t make sense in Vegas, or anywhere for that matter.
The Kelly wave shits on all the others from a great height in engineering and wave quality.
Business model-wise, I don’t know.
Too expensive to operate, only one rider every couple of minutes.
Vegas is the place although maybe right now because Lake Mead is in deep kimchi and threatening to shut off the flow to the Colorado River downstream, and that’s no bueno for everyone in the 300 miles between Hoover Dam and the Golfo de California.
I thought they built it there because there was already an existing hole in the ground filled with water due to a failed waterskiing park.
Well the two things came together nicely nicely.
I don’t think it was a failed waterski park.
I know a girl from Fresno who learned how to swim there and said it was thriving at one time.
They found a hole almost exactly the length and width they needed – I was told wider would have been better – that happened to be in a place so far flung, there was little chance anyone in the know would stumble over it and expose the whole deal.
God was with them, and if God is with them, who can be against them?
expose the whole deal!!!! you’re a daft cunt.
Expose what, you ignorant slut?
It’s an engineering marvel.
Im reading the history of Tesla right now and there are similarities.
Surf Ranch, like Tesla, got right what everyone else got wrong.
And the thing that made it happen was smart people and determination and money money money money money money money money and more money.
People are paying $50,000 – $70,000 a day to ride the thing and it’s booked 250 days a year.
They fly in on private jets just to have a go.
You must be Australian or something – cutting tall poppies or whatever.
On behalf of Uncle Sam: You’re welcome for the Battle of the Coral Sea.
Oh.. The japs were mere seconds away!! You complete moron. Kelly’s pool gets surfed by rich kooks. You are an industry skid mark. A cheap whore, who knows the value of nothing.
The Japanese would have overrun Australia if it wasn’t for Uncle Sam.
You’d be up to your knees in the rice paddies spreading fertilizer and speaking Nipponese instead of spreading the BS on here.
Port Moresby is 500 miles from Cairns as the Zeroes and the Betties fly.
Cakewalk if the Japanesers had taken it. They didn’t.
Hello Betty: The G4Ms predecessor the Mitsubishi G3M went into service in 1937 in China. Only two months later the Japanese Navy issued specifications to Mitsubishi. The specifications, unprecedented at the time, called for a twin-engine, land-based, attack bomber with a top speed of 398 kilometres per hour (247 mph), altitude of 3,000 metres (9,800 ft), and a range of 4,722 kilometres (2,934 mi) unloaded (without bombs and torpedoes), and a range of 3,700 kilometres (2,300 mi) when carrying an 800 kilograms (1,800 lb) torpedo or the same weight in bombs.
The Zero: At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, 521 Zeros were active in the Pacific, 328 in first-line units. The carrier-borne Model 21 was the type encountered by the Americans. Its tremendous range of over 2,600 kilometres (1,600 mi) allowed it to range farther from its carrier than expected, appearing over distant battlefronts and giving Allied commanders the impression that there were several times as many Zeros as actually existed.
Why? The American aircraft carriers Yorktown and the Lexington joined the carriers Yobbo and the Dole Bludger launched by Australia.
Oh what? Australia didn’t have aircraft carriers?
The Battle of the Coral Sea knocked out two Japanese carriers and lead to victory at Midway, along with saving Australia’s ungrateful behind butt.
Put down the vaper and the gaming console and read a history book, instead of planning your next tattoo.
My grandfather Clifton helped crack the Japanese Purple Code as a matter of fact so you can thank him personally.
Kelly’s pool is an engineering marvel and proof of what having a blank check will get you.
If you lived in the Luckier Country you could even peak in over the fence and take a look at it – look but don’t touch.
Same with Tesla.
Hopefully the same with TerraPower. Bill Gates is behind it. Safer, cleaner nuclear power. Could be the key to everything.
And the rich kooks surfing Surf Ranch are the smart, rich people financing Tesla and TerraPower and the Green New Deal and changing the world with all their dough – but they gotta have fun too.
Eventually it will filter down to Australia. Didn’t Musk build a giant battery complex to power all of South Australia or something?
You’re welcome, although I don’t understand why Australia doesn’t learn from Brazil and launch a biofuels program based on sugar cane.
Australia grows a lot of sugar cane, right? Works for Brazil.
Or just solar and wind. The solar radiation falling on Australia every day could easily power the whole country.
You like your electricity and airplanes and cars and radios and computers and everything you have that isn’t a billy pot or a fried goanna?
Thank Uncle Sam.
Industry?
There is no surf industry.
It died a couple decades ago.
All the cool people cashed in and now all the companies are owned by corporations, including Rip Curl.
Surf industry.
Right.
Pull your head out of the 80s.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
“The Japanese would have overrun Australia if it wasn’t for Uncle Sam”. you are an industrial grade moron. find me ONE respected historian who has ever published this rubbish. bet you can’t, cos you make up all your bullshit. such a dumb cunt.
Wow right when your email popped up Peter Townend was complimenting me on an article I wrote about Santa Cruz in Surfers Journal.
So I didn’t get to this until now.
Is Churchill a reputable enough historian for you? He wrote: “The Japanese Army attempted to invade Australia in force but decided the cultural quirk of dousing meat pies with tomato sauce was too repugnant. These people were barbarians – too unclean even to slaughter..”
And Yamamoto said in his posthumous memoir (after Uncle Sam blew him out of the sky: “日本軍は、岩と揚げたゴアナだけを提供しなければならなかったので、オーストラリアへの侵攻を気にしませんでした。”
such a dumb cunt. i knew you would fail. your heroes are retards.
Look just pull your prayer mat out of the hamper and find the direction of the United States of America and get down on your knees and thank Uncle Sam for saving your bacon from the yellow hordes.
And all will be forgiven.
dumb cunt
I don’t think I like your tone.
You cant find your prayer mat?
Did you sell it for mull?
Shame!
God is watching.
god ate my ass once. dude can chow.
Charmant.
“Dumb cunt” is vulgar and should be beneath you unless you are Australian in which case nothing is beneath you except Antarctica.
It is proper speech and manners that distinguish us from the Mongol races.
Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! You can do it!
And speaking of The Watermans’ Ball, since none of you had the money or the clout to be invited as a Plus One, here are some highlights.
Im not the world’s biggest fan of ORange County but those parties can be fun. Last night was fun.
J____ R____’s daughter is a Babealonian.
P____ N____ said the looting n Durban is much worse than what is being reported: “As if all of Orange County had been destroyed.” Which is not a bad idea.
D___ M____ is a good storyteller, except M Nii was Japanese, not Chinese.
They auctioned off an Audi but it should have been a Tesla, or at least an Audi E Tron.
The Chilean Sea Bass with steak was pretty good.
D_____ S_______ still looks a lot like his brother E_____ S_____
C____ M____ was W_____ of the Y______ but she couldn’t show face in person so she sent a video from M______.
The word “Olympics” was said 252,348 times during the course of the night.
Like the Oscars they had a rememberance of all the surfers who had passed on in the past year: Noll, Quigg, Fig, Harbour,
Peter Harper – brother of Ben Harper – showed face and lead the crowd in a singalong.
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Battle of the Coral Sea was May 4 – 8, 1942.
Japanesers had designs on the Lucky Country, according to this:
https://anzacportal.dva.gov…
The Japanese first attacked the Australian mainland on 19 February 1942 when they launched a devastating air raid on Darwin in the Northern Territory. Two weeks later, more aircraft attacked Broome in Western Australia killing about 70 people. By the end of September 1943, Japanese pilots had flown 97 air raids against towns and bases in northern Australia. On 31 May 1942, the war came to the east coast when three Japanese midget submarines entered Sydney Harbour. In June 1942 a submarine lightly shelled the eastern suburbs in Sydney and then Newcastle. Japanese submarines also attacked coastal shipping, causing the loss of some 60 lives and 29,000 tons of shipping during the two months after the midget submarine attack on Sydney Harbour.
could be amazing if they put a buoy halfway through the wave one guy kicks out and another guy paddles in and finishers of the wave. then they swap and other guy gets the start takes the boring part of falling off on a long wave so surfers don’t have worry about being conservative.
Well it failed because it’s boring to watch. Sure it would be fun to surf and if I was some Arab sheik (sorry Derek) i’d build one for myself and have a harem off to the side.
But if i’m a businessman i’m thinking you have to weigh it up against the competition. The numbers don’t add up. If they did, the pools in Melbourne and Spain and Cormwall and Waco would be KSWC pools.
And if i’m a viewer, waiting x minutes for the next wave is boring as fuck.
And if i’m an advertiser i’m not gonna pay much for something that bores the audience.
I like your thinking, it would be just like that Electric Blue Heaven video but with better waves.
Nothing wrong with either the wave or the surfer.
It’s the judging criteria and event management.
Wsl world champion = worlds greatest safety surfer
I’ve think I read that the pros get a total of 2 waves each pre-comp to dial in their performance and that’s it. I can see why they might not love it. They just want to go surfing.
Ok random question: Which WCT pro’s sex tape would you most want to watch (of either gender, for full inclusivity) IF there was a “post-heat” interview included?
LOL , I wonder if Kelly would see it that way?
didn’t make any for locals when I was there in Margs….my whole production was for Japan…
And he’s only surfing to 65% of his potential on that wave.
Monetizing technology takes a business model. Kelly’s pool was designed without one. Period!
To be fair, it was an R&D project that turned out well enough to become a semi-public/contest pool. That being said, that train and the waiting period between waves seem to make it inherently impractical compared to other pools.
I just tried to justify a Presse Passe to Surf Ranch because I spend so much time defending it on bitchgripe.com.
I actually like the drive out there because I’ve read Cadillac Desert and am fascinated by the Central Valley Project and all that.
And Im hoping to take S____ S____ along.
I hope they bite because I wanna ride my EBike around there and tell K___ S____ that after I saw him and M____ H____ shralping Velzyland this winter: That’s the wave he needs to put in a box.
Maybe even a little bigger and longer and a left like the right.
But that randomness – the sections popping up and making them react with tricks fast as lightning.
If Kelly could box up that kind of randomness, he would be golden.
You’re such an initial dropper!
Surf Ranch rents for $50,000 – $70,000 a day and is booked 250+ days a year.
You should be such a failure.
The only people who think Surf Ranch is a failure are failures.
The sideline-sitting kvetchers.
The thing is an engineering marvel.
Surf Ranch is like Tesla – illuminating to see someone get right what everyone else got wrong.
They built it for the same reason Musk wants to go to Mars: An engineering challenge and an adventure.
How many of those are left?
I doubt many of the commenters on here have actually been to the place.
Like everything else, you’re kvetching at this from a distance.
Chicks are getting barreled for 15 seconds on an artificial wave.
Put a cork in it, chum.
Kvetching the sideline-sitting kvetchers.
This is dumbass, Trump-class BS.
Surf Ranch is far from being a failure.
250 X $50,000+ a day = https://www.youtube.com/wat…
After an hour or two It’s boring to watch Ben. That is all.
Not if you’re there.
I could watch Pipeline all day every day.
The pool, most will tire after a full day.
Nothing against the marvel of it all, nor the business model. Just the overall repetition.
There is a thing called overheads though. Do you know the breakeven? How does it compare to the other wave pools?
Why is a one-story whorehouse more profitable than a two-story whorehouse?
No fuckin’ over head!
No idea what the profitability of Surf Ranch is at $50,000 – $70,000 a day but if it’s 25% that’s still righteous bucks.
And not being public probably has economies – like insurance and such.
Anyone who bags on the place has never been there.
To see is to believe, like driving a Tesla.
That wave is long and strong and down to get the friction on.
Change your name to “Da Surf Poet”
Or CNN? NYT? Washy Post?
Viva Israel! #neveragain
I fail to understand why the pros are not committed to the surf ranch , i mean its been publicly championed by everyone who has been anyone in pro surfing Kanga , MR , Occy , BL , Lopez , Curren , TC and NC , the list goes on forever , so why now the sudden change in direction ? , the surf pool predictability surely is the very platform the proffesional atheletes require to measured or judged equally upon , no high or low tides , no rips , no bare reef end sections , no choice either left or right , no hiding from sections of consequence , simply a predictable sequence of maneuvers on a set platform executed to the best of the atheletes ability will be scored predictably to ascertain a winner , is that not the basis of professional surfing.
Put it this way , if all the events are held in predominately right hand tubes does it really mean surfer x is the best proffesional surfer , open your eyes offcourse it doesnt.
Professional surfing as it has existed to date is simply a hoax created by the surf brands and the old school print media.
Have a nice morning war lords.
War lords, so good.
You are dead right about why Pro surfing existed, that’s why Rabbit didn’t allow the coke (or was it pepsi) world tour to go ahead because the surf brands went apeshit.
Wave pools are viable for competition, but I think WSL got married to the wrong pool tech.
I get your point here but this sounds horrible to watch. This is why they never televise the compulsories in Olympics figure skating, even though the free skating is a big draw.
That and the fact that they haven’t had figure skating compulsories for 30 years.
i can’t Wait for the waiting period to start.. I hope the onshores don’t fuck it
If the pools definition of success is selling team building sessions to private jet fly corporates then tick, it is a perfect wave and everyone wants to surf it once. Is the wave good for leaderboard competion? Half tick, the wave is to long and its to long a wait between waves. Do we like leaderboard competition? Not really the chess game of heat strategy and the the unknown of nature is half the fun. So as far as WSL CT events go they either need to deliver a pool in the USA with wave garden cove type tech or just move the brazil CT event to the new pool and bring trestles back as a CT stop rather than the final.
What the pool needs is Mick’s shark to spice things up a bit.