Youthful energy.

It is official. After making its 2020 Olympic debut at Tokyo, surfing (along with skateboarding and rock climbing), will be part of the 2028 Los Angeles Games and has been approved on Paris 2024’s “additional” list.

With Brisbane set to host the 2032 sporting festival, it is likely that professional surfers will be winning gold, silver and bronze for the decade to come.

Exciting.

Regarding Los Angeles, Casey Wasserman, chairman of the L.A. organizing committee, said, “The LA28 Games have always been about bringing more freshness, youthful energy and creativity into the Olympic and Paralympic movement.”

Fernando Aguerre, president of the surfing’s international federation, added, “We have always known that surfing was a natural fit for LA28. As the official sport of California, surfing is action, youth and energy combined.”

Wonderful.

Now, where do you think the surfing will be staged?

Lower Trestles in beautiful San Clemente?

Iconic Malibu a pleasant drive north?

Surf City, USA Huntington Beach?

I’d imagine knives are being sharpened in the various city halls.

I’d imagine civil war is nigh.

Eight lives saved in two separate rescues at same beach!

The former world number ten surfer, Bryce Ellis, has experienced a wild case of deja vu, literally “already seen”, on Monday when he saved two drowning teenage girls from a rip at Yamba, a pretty fishing town a little south of Byron Bay.

Ellis, who is fifty-eight and who was described, a little unfairly I think, as “ginger-haired” in Matt Warshaw’s Encyclopedia of Surfing, was fishing at Yamba’s Main Beach when he saw the girls jump into a rip at the northern end of the beach.

Ellis handed his fishing pole to a bystander and jumped, fully clothed, into the drink.

With the help of a nearby surfer, the pair saved the two kids.

“They were a little bit anxious I think,” Ellis told ABC News. “Whenever you go into an oxygen debt, I think, it does get a bit frightening… You’ve either got to get to the sandbank or let it take its course or wash over to the rocks… It really rockets out … it looks like beautiful water but there’s a certain spot where it does get very strong and it drops off.”

Four years earlier in 2018, same scenario, Ellis was fishing when he heard screams and saw a group of six nurses caught in the same rip.

“I don’t think they had very good swimming skills,” he said. “One of the five women had gone under a few times and had swallowed water.”

Ellis swam out, worked out who was in most danger, and, collecting ’em in pairs, eventually got all six women safely to shore, a feat that earned him a bravery award.

In the citation it was said the event could have “easily turned into a major search operation.”

Ellis says respecting the ocean and knowing your limits is real important, something 1984’s rookie of the year has always lived by.

In 1986, Ellis and fellow Australian Gary Green withdrew from the opening round of the Billabong Pro at Waimea Bay because the surf was too big.

The wonderful Mara Wolford, RIP, was Bryce’s girl in 1986 and wrote poetically about the moment.

Bryce would never live that morning down. There was a North Shore winter, a couple of years later, when Bryce and I stayed in a house right on the Bay. One morning, the friend we were rooming with woke me at dawn to go surf Pinballs, when it was just starting to cap on the Bay reef proper, so that when Bryce woke up the first thing he saw see was me out in the lineup. I had fun out there. Not until later did I discover that our friend’s motivation was to poke fun at Bryce.

It went on for years. There were articles, lots of heckling and jokes, and a perceptible freeze-out from the world tour’s League of Titans. It is crystal-clear to me now, however, and has been for decades, that Bryce did exactly as he should have that morning at the Billabong contest. He followed his own judgement, listened to his better, and acted on logic and experience—or lack thereof.

There is nothing stronger or more elegant than a man who doesn’t bow to the crowd.

Another brick in the wall.

Mere days ago, at the dawn of the Billabong Pipeline Pro, I wondered if maybe, maybe, the World Surf League’s patented Wall of Positive Noise was beginning to crack. Students of professional surfing are well aware of the Wall, which the League began erecting soon after acquiring the Association of Surfing Professionals in 2012 for free. The only sentiments allowed, inside, are those unrelentingly cheerful, unfailingly cheery, even in the face of irrefutable truths otherwise.

Well, mere days ago, the League published, on its very own organ, a story lightly critical of Brazilian Filipe Toledo’s ability at Pipeline, writing, “It’s no secret that Pipeline is not Filipe Toledo’s strongest venue on Tour. While he’s arguably the fastest, most exciting surfer in the world in high-performance waves, there has been room for improvement when it comes to surfing heavy barrels like Pipe.”

A small break?

Small truths peeking through?

Toledo, for his part, proved the League very much correct by failing to paddle for decent waves on The Day of Days, earning a whopping 3.50 heat total and further cementing his reputation as the bravest coward.

But did sadness reign thereafter at the thought of hurt feelings?

Did one WSL staffer simply go off reservation?

Panic in the halls of Santa Monica that a situation had arisen needing to be immediately countered with an all-out absurdist campaign of unrelenting positivism?

Possibly and to whit: Yesterday’s historic women’s day two featured the “blood feud heat of the century” pitting mortal enemies Moana Jones Wong against Tatiana Weston-Webb. You certainly recall last year when Weston-Webb dropped in on Wong then proceeded to get “belted” both on land and Instagram as Wong unleashed a stream of insults including “if you have bad eyesight then don’t surf Pipe” amongst many others.

Well, in its wrap the World Surf League described the affair thusly:

On the other side of the draw, wildcard Moana Jones Wong continued to show the world why she’s considered one of the best women out at Pipeline. Dispatching longtime friend and one of last year’s Rip Curl WSL Finalists Tatiana Weston-Webb in the Round of 16 with her graceful tuberiding, she relished the underdog opportunity.

Longtime friend?

The Wall is back.