"I’m not anti vax. I’m anti mandating medical procedures," says Kelly Slater. "Think I’ll wait for the antibodies naturally if I get COVID."

The Brazilian two-time world champ Gabriel Medina has revealed via the live video-streaming service Twitch that he ain’t going near the Tahiti Pro following next week’s Mex event, which may or may not run after Oaxaca shut down all beaches following a new COVID outbreak. 

Bedecked in jewels, Medina, who is twenty-seven, says he refused the Brazilian Olympic committee’s offer of a COVID-19 vax prior to the Tokyo Games, and therefore cannot meet France’s strict-ish quarantine laws. 

See, ‘cause he ain’t vaccinated, Medina would be forced into ten days of quarantine following Mex, meaning he’d miss the event. 

“There’s no time to go from Mexico to there, because it’s one after the other. I’ll be forced not to go,” said Medina. “But good. I can rule out a stage, so it’s good.”

And Medina isn’t going to be the only surfer choosing one of the other contest given some high-profile surfers’ objections to the COVID vaccination.

Two months ago in a social media stoush, Kelly Slater revealed he wasn’t anti getting jabbed, necessarily, but wanted to sit back a little, examine the side-effects.

Responding to a claim that he was pushing “anti-vax nonsense”, Slater wrote,

“Why does this account always end up with these triggered, bitchy people who can’t take a joke? And second, I’m not anti vax. I’m anti mandating medical procedures. But I’ve never even pushed that.”

Asked whether he’d be getting the vaccine, Slater wrote, “probably not anytime soon… It hasn’t been studied long enough to know long term cons. A friend’s dad also died a couple days after getting it from blood clots, so there’s that. Think I’ll wait for the antibodies naturally if I get COVID.”

And, although no longer on tour, the much-loved former world number two, Taj Burrow, warned his 326,000 followers back in May of the folly of vaccination.

“Do not get the poisonous needle,” wrote Tez.

Medina’s decision reveals one of the two flaws in the Finals Day format; that a surfer with enough wins in the first half of the year can pick and choose which contests he appears in during the back half.

Heady days etc.

Timely given BJ Penn’s similar near-death experience at a wavepool.

The Canary Islands-based big-wave bodysurfer Ahmed Erraji has snatched a harrowing Go Pro clip of his almost-drowning, which bears examining, I think, and which is timely given BJ Penn’s similar near-death experience at a wavepool.

Morrocan-born Erraji, who is forty-ish and swings by the nickname Hijo del Mar (son of the sea), ain’t afraid to swim out at thirty-foot Nazaré.

So he knows his chops.

In this short, we watch as Erraji is pushed by an eight-foot wave into a cave in the cliffs.

He don’t die, no plot spoiler there, but Erraji is trapped inside the cave for two-and-a-half hours, waves completely filling his little grotto, causing the viewer some anguish as he tries to imagine how he would react if jammed into a cliff, never knowing if you’d exit etc.

“Have you heard of the saying “Fear Kills”? That’s the exact job of fear,” Erraji told Wavelength magazine. “Fear tells you: ‘If you’re going to bodysurf that wave, you’ll never come back,’ but with time I learned that on the other side of your biggest fears, there are the best things of your life.”