Longboarding for the win!

The most exciting story in all of surfing, outside Kelly Slater’s vaccination status, is the World Surf League’s 2021 longboard champion Joel Tudor opening a guerrilla front against Santa Monica that has since blown into open warfare. The whole imbroglio swirled to life, days ago, as a rumor surfaced that the WSL was going to slash its Longboard World Tour from three events to one. Tudor took to Instagram to demand account, in light of the League leaning heavily on longboarding images, videos, on its social channels and especially during the just-wrapped, highly successful, Billabong Pro Pipeline.

The World Surf League, neither addressed the rumor of decimation nor underlying issues and instead released a letter from the desk of commissioner Jessi Miley-Dyer criticizing Tudor for being “inaccurate and misleading.”

Tudor published the ill-conceived missive, calling for “town hall meetings” amongst other things, and here we are.

Bombs bursting in air.

World Surf League taking heavy losses as its recent breast pounding regarding “equality” and “inclusivity” made to look purely performative.

But what does Joel Tudor actually wish for? I called to ask and he was kind enough to answer on his way through the smoke, ready to pound his 95-theses on the World Surf League’s Wall of Positive Noise.

You know, guys don’t have much leg to stand on but regards to the women it’s insulting that the WSL is trying to beat around the bush. They use women’s longboarding to promote everything. The surf brands too, every single major surf brand, has used women’s longboarding for years and years and years without paying them barely anything and now the ASP, sorry WSL, has an opportunity to do something but they’re going to cut the tour down to one event? You can’t make a champion out of one event. I might have stayed quiet but when I was watching Pipe, they kept running the same ad of women’s longboarding and it kicked back all these memories. You’ve got an ad calling for equality and togetherness? Nothing has changed. They use it but never support it and this is especially true with the women. 

It was at this point I expected Tudor to go in for the kill. He has won the moral high ground and also has the business high ground. Women’s longboarding is the biggest growth sector in surfing, has been for a long time, and longboards, not softops but glass and resin longboards, make up the vast majority of surfboards sold. Plus, the longboard side of the draw is the only to ever feature two black surfers in a final. The terms of surrender very much up to him and so I asked, “What’s the dream?”

Three events is a good start. As a kid, when I first became a professional, longboarding was cool sideshow on the down days. Just tack us on to your existing events and save money. The infrastructure, hold window, judges everything is already there but they’ve never given us a chance. Are they scared we’re going to steal the show? Lowers, Bells, Hossegor… we used to be part of the tour but for for thirty-two years, thirty-two fucking years, they won’t let us have us but want to run this fake shit about equality and inclusiveness. Don’t be a bunch of fucking phonies.

Three events?

It sounds beyond reasonable.

Maybe even too reasonable.

World Surf League?

An easy doggy door. Just claim “rumor” of longboard world tour decimation are completely unfounded and kick it back to three events. Hell, actually don’t be a bunch of fucking phonies and kick it to five.

Longboarding at Bells instead. Lowers too.

Detente.

"There’s a reason I’m not talking about it that is personal. I do believe that medical privacy is a real thing."

Earlier today, the triple-vetted rumour that Kelly Slater, noted for his public opposition to vax mandates, “has already been vaccinated and may be ready to push through Australia’s green and gold gates with no fuss at all.”

Per reporter Smith’s story, 

“He is number one in the rankings, heading into the Hurley Pro Sunset Beach, with the Australian leg to follow. Students of the game will certainly be aware that the land down under cares not for pedigree, for athletic excellence, in the face of a waning Coronavirus pandemic having recently shamed tennis star Novak Djokovic out of Melbourne for his refusal to “take the jab” but will Slater’s noted ultra-competitiveness, his quest for title number 12, overwhelm his own very public vaccine hesitancy?

“Unbelievable?”

Apparently, not.

“I’ll see you in Australia,” Slater has just told Reuters. “(My vaccination status) is an important question, and there’s a reason I’m not talking about it that is personal. I do believe that medical privacy is a real thing. But I think my answer that I’ll see you in Australia answers that.”

The comments mark a stunning backflip for the world’s greatest athlete whose world title dreams were in tatters only a few weeks ago after Australia’s federal sports minister Richard Colbeck said Slater “has no chance of getting into the country” unless he’s injected with an approved COVID-vaccine prior to arrival.

“I reckon he knows the rules. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a surfer, or a tennis player, a tourist or anyone else, those are the rules. They apply to everyone,” Colbeck said. “I don’t like the chances of him competing in Victoria, and I’d hate to think of what the chances were of him competing in Western Australia.”

The fourth and fifth events on this year’s ten-event tour are Bells and Margarets, April 10 through May 4.

Australia’s vax policies came into sharp relief over the past month following the deportation of world number one tennis player Novak Djokovic.

Novak, who ain’t into COVID vaccines, secured a vax exemption to compete at the Australian Open in Melbourne, which, amid a rising furore from Australians, was quickly cancelled by the country’s PM.

When The New York Times posted the story on Instagram, Slater teed off with the claim Melbourne’s citizens had been brainwashed by its state masters, developing a bond with their captors during six lockdowns totalling 262 days after COVID kicked off worldwide in March 2020.

“Maybe Stockholm Syndrome can now change its name to Melbourne/Australia Syndrome,” wrote Slater. “It’s sad to see the celebrated division by the “virtuous” vaccinated. If you’re vaccinated why are you concerned/worried about anyone else’s status… unless, of course, it doesn’t protect you? Or you’re scared you’ll catch it or upset you had to take the risk of vaccination yourself? So much brainwashed hatred in people’s hearts regardless of vax status.”

Last October, Slater was slammed by the Australian press after launching multiple fronts in the online vaccine war, saying friends have “literally” been killed by vaccines and that he knows more about being healthy than “99 percent of doctors.”

"Still seventeen, he looked a lot older…A universe of adult concerns and expectations orbiting around him like space trash."

He could retire as world number one and our once and present King of Pipeline.

He could obtain any wildcard he wanted if he got the itch in the future.

Trestles is a Brazilian trampoline park at this point, so Kelly doesn’t have to prove anything there during kiddie hour at the end of the year.

But even if he presses on, and what a wonder that would still be, every time I watch him surf, and especially during his marvel at the Billabong Pro on I am reminded of this portrait I shot that was to accompany the first SURFER cover story I wrote about Kelly.

He was seventeen years old and just about to make the jump to professional hyperspace. But at the time he and his family were just getting by, sleeping on mattresses on the floor of a small rented house back by the canals of Cocoa Beach. Kelly and I shared one of those mattresses, which was cool with me because like him, I too grew up in a house full of brothers.

And so was created that most famous of opening lines in any feature written about Kelly, “He sleeps like an angel”.

Since then I have always felt like a distant Uncle of Kelly. And during my many years as a senior editor/writer/portrait photographer at SURFER, I always defended and protected Kelly in the media.

I still do.

The shit he caught for Baywatch always made me angry. Yeah, sure…you try it and then woo Pamela Anderson into being your girlfriend.

Anyway, I needed a portrait of Kelly to go with the feature and he wanted to go down to his local beach and climb all over a fishing trawler that had run aground. So we clambered up on top of the thing and talked for awhile about his upcoming eighteenth birthday and how serious adulthood was and of how much things were going to change for him. Still seventeen, he looked a lot older that afternoon. Haunted by the cascade of media and sponsor attention he was already getting. Having to change his family’s home phone number all the time because of the fan girls that were stalking him. Shit like that. A universe of adult concerns and expectations orbiting around him like space trash.

As the sun set over his home town he got real quiet and then said, “I guess I’m gonna have to figure out how to control some things”.

That is when I shot this photo and came up with the title I was going to use for the feature The Seduction of Kelly Slater.

Back at SURFER, there was a disconnect with the art director.

For the story, the art director ran some photo of a 16 year old Kelly smiling and joking around in the beach showers at Sebastian Inlet after a surf.

To me it was an accidental metaphor for how the surfing world misunderstood the pressure this kid was under. And in my opinion, the pressure he still is.

I believe that had they run my portrait, this portrait, everyone would have taken a deep breath, given the kid a break and from that point forward, raised Kelly in the media as less a messiah and more a human being.

Some rumored evidence.

The world’s greatest surfer, and recently crowned Pipeline Pro, Kelly Slater turned 50 years old today, or yesterday, and what a story he is early on in this 2022 World Surf League Championship Tour season. Slaying opponents at the globe’s “most dangerous wave,” appearing tan, rested and ready for the long run.

He is number one in the rankings, heading into the Hurley Pro Sunset Beach, with the Australian leg to follow.

Now, students of the game will certainly be aware that the land down under cares not for pedigree, for athletic excellence, in the face of a waning Coronavirus pandemic having recently shamed tennis star Novak Djokovic out of Melbourne for his refusal to “take the jab” but will Slater’s noted ultra-competitiveness, his quest for title number 12, overwhelm his own very public vaccine hesitancy?

I received a rumor, yesterday, from a fine source who triple vetted his own sources, that Slater has allegedly already been vaccinated and may be ready to push through Australia’s green and gold gates with no fuss at all.

Unbelievable?

Adjacent, though, looking at the facts, Slater’s main issue is vaccine mandates, not necessarily the vaccine itself, therefore it would not be hypocritical for him to self-select pharmaceutical intervention.

But what do you think? Does this hot piece of rumor stand to your sniffer?

We will all soon find out, I suppose, in a few short 87,600 minutes.

Exciting.