"Suck it, Logan."
Yesterday, or possibly the day before, the World Surf League “summoned” its top five male surfers and its top five female surfers to the San Clemente pier in order to sell the new season-ending one-day surf-off to The New York Times.
The journalist, John Branch, wrote of the forced junket, “Surfing works hard to project a carefree attitude. But there is a persistent churn around the business of professional surfing, a decades-long undercurrent to the culture. It is the indefatigable belief that there are more fans to hook and more money to be made. That is why the World Surf League is operating this year with a jolt of urgency. Under new leadership, it hopes to ride a swell from surfing’s Olympic debut in Tokyo while overhauling its schedule and, most notably, the way it crowns champions.”
He described the overall scene on the pier as “predictably mellow” even with the ten best surfers in the world “milling about in flip-flops and caps bearing sponsor’s logos” then approached Gabriel Medina, current number one on the men’s side, who certainly would have been wearing Reef flip-flops and a Rip Curl hat, for a positive take on the new model.
Medina told him, “I don’t like it because I don’t think it’s fair. You spend your life, a year long, and now the last event in September, you’re gonna decide all your year?” He then shrugged and added, “I don’t know about business, I don’t know how it works. They tried to do something different.”
World Surf League CEO Erik Logan, who was described as wearing “sunglasses, a trim beard, faded jeans and clean Vans” certainly would have overheard Medina’s take but tried to wash it away with positivity saying, “The opportunity to win it in the water, in the arena, is a really unique opportunity in surfing that really hasn’t happened. We were very blessed in 2019 to see that with Italo and Gabe at Pipeline, and just the intensity of that was really codifying for a conversation that already had been going on.”
Then added, “That amplification will trickle down into the growth of the sport, the growth of the W.S.L., the growth of the industry. That’s why it’s a good thing.”
Branch ended the piece with a dagger, suggesting that Logan “might want to explain that all to Medina.”
Ouch.
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Does ELO know how to speak sentences that non-corpo people can understand?
You use the word conformist a lot.
Yes it is.
I’m wishing for hard south west winds coming out of the north to ruin this stupid contest and hopefully bring the WSL down and destroy the surf industry so that surfing may live free.
I feel bad for Brothers wife.
nick carrol is cancer.
Pip likely wouldn’t even have made it to top 5 if Chopes had run. But he can easily win trestles so his title is most definitely legitimate??! This whole thing is just so pathetic.
Medina might not be the hero we want but he might be the hero we need.
There will be waves this week. The New England Patriots had a perfect 16-0 season and lost the Super Bowl to the 10-6 New York Giants. It’s a different kind of pressure having to win that day. The higher seeds have a big advantage in this format. It will be entertaining whatever people’s opinion.
WSL sounds like the Australian government when you put it that way.
In a wave of consequence, not in an amplified, codified conversation. Right on Gabby, I’m rootin’ for ya!
the more gaybriel shits on the woozle the more I like him.
I’m with CB. Bone broth.
Italo will take it and it will be the last WSL event in history.
Pleasant distractions that can take us back to days of freedom can be a powerful impetus to act against the evil ruling class. Don’t forget that we are many and we are brave and we are strong and we will not bow down to this present darkness sweeping the land.
Yup. The WSL is done. Next year they mandate the injections and everybody walks.
You can’t leave until your J overlords give you permission
“Then (Elo), added, “That amplification will trickle down into the growth of the sport, the growth of the W.S.L., the growth of the industry. That’s why it’s a good thing.”
Big, big and bigger.
And that’s a good thing?
Good for who?
Billionaires
nick carrols sock drawer. hoping for some billabong sock for xmas. free!!!
Old argument. Some sports have a ladder finish, some have a Superbowl, some have a best of 7 series.
Deciding a surf contest at a single venue shows no appreciation of how the sport actually works.
“The opportunity to win it in the water, in the arena, is a really unique opportunity in surfing that really hasn’t happened”. That’s some next level horseshit right there. It literally happened last month at the Olympics.
Only Ziff takes him seriously because his paying him ?
Ziff has put him in there to confuse and distract us. The oligarchs don’t want ordinary people to experience and enjoy life directly and honestly anymore. They want us to obsess and talk and squabble on and on about pointless shit and lose sight of the important things.
The top 5 at the end of the year surfed the full range of waves on tour better than the other 27 surfers. Whatever wave the finals are held at, you have to surf well too. Conner Coffin through a backside full rote today. He gets it. Also, in the previous system it was possible for someone to win a world title with out ever winning a contest.
That’s funny ’cause we’re looking forward to you leaving too