Victory is nigh.

Last week, smoke unexpectedly filled the horizon as the World Surf League declared war on professional longboarding. It all began with a rumor that Santa Monica was considering decimating the longboard tour, slashing it from three events to one. 2021’s longboard champion and great polemicist Joel Tudor took to Instagram to demand account, illustrating how heavy the League leaned upon his favored dance in their promotion and how much better it did, engagement-wise, than its shortboard sister.

World Surf League commissioner and “head of the longboard tour” Jessi Miley-Dyer decided to respond, via letter, to all professional longboarders but willfully misrepresented the thrust of Tudor’s argument. Tudor published the missive and open warfare raged across the land interrupted, though, by a combination of Super Bowl weekend and Valentine’s Day.

How would things look at the dawn of a new week?

Well, it appears as if the World Surf League is nearing total defeat as a change.org petition titled Get the WSL to Re-instate the World Longboard Tour has begun circulating.

The WSL has decided that after a successful season, even during a pandemic, of the World Longboard Tour to cancel it and turn it into a one stop event. This was decided upon after not only crowning two amazing champions but after claiming that there was not enough “online engagement” (which is so far from the truth.

There are many reasons why this is disappointing. The first in my mind, is that while the WSL has made huge progress in equal prize money and equal events for men and women on the WCT, the women’s CT still has only 18 surfers so equal opportunity has not yet been addressed. Meanwhile, the Longboard World Tour has provided a home for women long boarders with women have huge ownership over the longboard tour and women longboarders widely being considered the premier division of the tour.

Etc.

Damaging enough in and of itself. Devastating considering it has been shared by Malibu heavy and heir to Miki Dora’s throne Jonah Hill to his 3.5 million followers.

Hill, a longboarder of note, will no doubt force the World Surf League to expand the Longboard World Tour by many events leaving Miley-Dyer ‘s reputation as a great tactician in tatters.

Where will the instrument of unconditional surrender be signed?

Somewhere picturesque like Reims, Germany?

At Rip Curl’s Torquay headquarters?

Hill’s Malibu home?

Other?

Much to consider.

"Every mother is ready to warm her children."

Ain’t it ironic that the three-time world champ Gabriel Medina has passed through the gates of hell over the course of the last eighteen months and yet has never appeared happier, at least in photographs.

A few weeks back, Medina, who is twenty-eight, quit the tour just before the opening event at Pipe citing his fragile mental health.

“I have emotional issues that I need to deal with,” he wrote.

Shortly after, the breakdown of his marriage to thirty-three-year-old Sports Illustrated model Yasmin Brunet and the fire sale of the pair’s beachfront house in Sao Paulo became public.

According to Brazil media, Brunet, who is thirty-three, refused to leave the joint and put towels over the security cameras so no one could see what she was doing. Allegedly etc. 

And before all that, there was the estrangement of his mama and step-dad, which included a messy split of assets, and a wild feud between his wife and his mama over the existence of a supposed sex tape starring Brunet.

But, maybe, a little sunshine is beginning to appear through the clouds after mammy Simone posted a conciliatory message to her kid along with a photo of Gabriel folded in her arms.

 

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A post shared by Siimone Medina (@simonemedina)

“This morning I prayed, getting ready to leave, end of vacation!!!!! This photo appeared in my Google photos memories of a very cold day in Trestles, I almost became a penguin lol but even with cold every mother is ready to warm her children. A lot of training day at Trestles. As always rain, shine, wind or hurricane, big waves, shark we are always there as a resting place. God bless you in this new cycle son. gabrielmedina felipemedina_17 @sophiamedina @charlaomedina100 you are my resting place. Love you”

As well,  following Brunet’s departure Medina’s rekindled his friendship with soccer superstar Neymar, a recent post for his pal’s birthday hitting a whopping 700k likes.

“I love you man,” wrote Medina, I’ll let the photos do the talking.”

 

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A post shared by #10 🥷🏻 (@gabrielmedina)

Rams vs. Bengals vs. surfers.

Today, Sunday February 13, is the Super Bowl. For those not versed in America sport, it is much like Pipeline except held at the end of the football season as opposed to the beginning. Now, once upon a time, this Sunday was a wonderful time for surfers to slip out and catch an early evening surf as very many millions of people chose to melt into the couch, overstuffed with 7-layer dips and whatnot, unable to make it to the beach.

This year, though, with Los Angeles hosting “The Big Game” and dastardly too perfect weather descending on the region, beaches and lineups have become overstuffed themselves with hot fans.

According to the local CBS affiliate:

With less than 24 hours until Super Bowl LVI, featuring the hometown Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals, Southern California beaches were far more crowded than normal on Saturday.

Over 100,000 football fans set to attend the big game, many actually headed away from SoFi Stadium, and instead to the sand in an attempt to take in the uncharacteristic summer day in February.

Since many of the people heading into the Southland hail from Ohio, or other Midwest states, 80 degree beach weather is far from normal, in fact, on Saturday in Cincinnati, there was a high of 23 degrees with a likelihood for snow.

So when Becky Matheny, a Bengals fan from Louisville, KY saw today’s weather she made sure she went to thaw out of her winter freeze at the beach, “I love it here,” she said.

“Becky” and her ilk forced San Diego lifeguards to staff up and also made parking lightly difficult for surf locals.

Back to the 7-layer dip, though. What is your favorite decadent sporting snack?

Chicken wings?

Cheese log?

Cheese nachos?

Put recipe in comments please.

"To top it off the combo of drugs has me waking from nightmares so real I can feel them deep down inside and they scare the shit out of me…”

The Oceanside surfer and former world number eighteen, Mike Lambresi, who nearly died one month ago after falling while trying to snatch the perfect angle for an Instagram photo, has revealed the shocking aftermath of the accident. 

In an Instagram story and with words pasted over a photo of the pretty San Diego vista he was trying to snatch when he fell, Lambresi writes, “In the middle of the worst night since my return hospital last Tuesday. I can’t make more of these… I’ve never ever thought seriously about choosing to amputate a limb but at this point my left foot is getting serious consideration. Crazy just seeing it as I write it. All I want is a little relief from the agony. To top it off the combo of drugs has me waking from nightmares so real I can feel them deep down inside and they scare the shit out of me…”

After the accident Lambresi, who turns fifty-eight this year, posted gruesome photos of the injury; images so disturbing Instagram had to place a “sensitive content” warning over ‘em. 

“Lost my left heel and did a pretty job on right leg and foot also. Wheelchair for the next month and more surgeries to come for skin grafts etc,” wrote Lambresi. 

 

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A post shared by Mike Lambresi (@mike_lambresi)

Lambresi only started stand-up surfing at eighteen in 1982 but got so good so fast he’d won the prestigious California Stubbies Trials within one year. 

Fame and chasing the tour never appealed to Lambresi.

He quit the tour three years later in 1985, aged twenty-one, to stay home with his wife and kid, although he’d dominate the domestic PSAA tour for years, winning it in 1987, 88 and 89.

“I didn’t like the tour,” Lambresi later said. “I hated traveling eight or nine months of the year; it was grueling. I was engaged, and kept putting off getting married because I was always on the road. Quitting was actually a pretty easy choice for me.”