A damning tirade!

The WSL is trying to kill longboarding again and we don’t like it.

In 2019, The Longboard World Tour had new life breathed into it in the form of the creation of a multi-stop tour that went to New York City and a corn field in Spain to be finished off in a hurricane in Taiwan. Devon Howard was also appointed as commissioner in a clear move by WSL to push longboarding into its home of traditional style.

Now it doesn’t matter what Devon Howard does, because WSL is set on deciding world champions in a single event like they do in the CT Finals, except without the 10 preceding events to make it actually interesting.

So now, current World Champion Joel Tudor, who returned to the tour to win the whole thing in 2021 despite being approximately double the age of his rivals, is back to his favourite hobby of calling out the WSL.

 

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A post shared by Joel Tudor (@joeljitsu)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Joel Tudor (@joeljitsu)

This time it’s taken the form of this being a step backwards in the gains that women have made in competitive surfing.

And he’s got a point.

Chris Cote said on air during women’s Pipe something along the lines of,  “the same waves, the same judging criteria, the same number of events, everything the same”  except for the 50% opportunity that women actually get to compete on the Championship Tour.

It seems to be this readily forgotten detail that the women’s CT has only half the number of surfers of the men.

Over on the longboard tour however, the women’s tour is the same size. In fact, the women’s division is broadly considered the premier division of the tour. And the WSL are prepared to kill it off, giving women even less opportunity to compete.

All as they masquerade as a world leader of gender equality in sport.

So, while Joel Tudor has long been a divisive figure across longboarding, he has an unrivalled ability to call people to action.

If he’s saying fuck the WSL, then loggers across the globe are likely going to fuck it.

He rallied for two decades to make the WSL establish a traditional criteria for the longboard World Tour and in the end they did.

So, while Tudor seems an unlikely ally in the struggle for gender equality in sport, when feminism meets longboarding I am glad he is on our side.

A moral failure? A business one?

Joel Tudor, world champion and longtime vocal proponent for surfing’s roots, has never been shy when it comes to sharing his opinion. Agree or disagree, the San Diego fixture is a perpetual breath of fresh air in the carefully scripted, stale world of professional organized surfsport and his latest missive, in the wake of the rumor that the World Surf League is decimating the longboard world tour, cutting it from three events to one, is very much something to ponder.

Taking to Instagram, Tudor wrote:

Yo @wsl @jessmileydyer @elo_eriklogan can y’all explain this kind of equality? Not very woke of you to treat the log gals with so much disrespect in regards to pay? It’s kinda clear on your own Instagram which style is more favored by your audience! Urging all log gals , parents & friends to write the @wsl asking why this is still happening….also they are planning on canceling the longboard tour to a one event stop! Hit em up , post about it & make some noise to make things right!! Awoooooooooo!

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A post shared by Joel Tudor (@joeljitsu)

Specifically, his issue is the seemingly purely performative equality.

The World Surf League, as you know, regularly thumps its breast over samsies ‘tween guys and gals except any student of our favorite pastime would have clearly seen that longboarding, particularly female longboarding, dominates its advertisements during events including the just wrapped, and highly successful, Billabong Pro Pipeline. Longboarding, particularly female longboarding, receives much more engagement on the social channels (see Tudor’s Instagram) and longboarding, particularly female longboarding, is the biggest growth sector in the surf world (per a recent study by Firewire).

Now, if the World Surf League was in the business of making money but also the moral obligation of equality, wouldn’t it be leaning heavily into this segment?

This all begs the question, where is the WSL failing worse? Business or morals?

Discuss.

“Joel was having the worst surf of his life out there. The man’s human after all.”

Mitch Parkinson, son of hotshot eighties shredder Darryl and star of BeachGrit’s surfboard test series, has fed the engines of innumerable Instagram accounts with a wild board steal from cuz Joel Parkinson at Snapper Rocks yesterday.

Mitch, who is twenty-six and once hailed, by me, as the best ten-year-old surfer in the world, was using his conspirator’s scowl to scoop up the best waves at Snapper.

“You have to be an arsehole,” says Mitch.

Then as he paddled into one of the sets of the day from the shoulder came world champion Joel.

“He dropped in on me like an old Bruce Lee (Snapper local not martial arts icon) sitting wide on the shoulder,” says Mitch, in between applying resin and cloth to a JS surfboard. “We were next to each other and I saw that he was too high and that he was going to go over so I grabbed his board. I was waiting for it to get ripped out of my arms but then, ‘Yes!, he’s not wearing a leggy!‘”

Mitch says he surfed Joel’s twin-fin to Greenmount, a couple of hundred metres away, and walked back along the point to cheers and laughter, “and to Joel waiting patiently for me.”

Mitch says the exchange enlivened an otherwise poor surf for his storied cuz.

“Joel was having the worst surf of his life out there. He couldn’t get a wave. It was funny to watch him. The man’s human after all.”

Two GOATs, one cup.

The just-wrapped Billabong Pro Pipeline continues to reverberate what with the entirely epic surf witnessed across the entirety of the event window, stunning performances by a cadre of unsuspected Brazilians (Miggy, Sammy, João), stunning non-performances by a well-known Brazilian (Filipe), a Hawaiian prince rising to claim a piece of his kingdom (Moniz), historic blood feuds settled in the water (Jones Wong and Weston-Webb) and, at the end, an aged superstar brought to tears (Slater).

Magnificent. It was magnificent and the World Surf League staff (save the show runner) all deserve pats on the back. In a twist few saw coming, though, WSL CEO Erik Logan has taken it many steps beyond back patting and has self-identified as a GOAT, or Greatest of All-Time, alongside the 11x World Champion and freshly crowned Pro Pipeline.

An Instagram post shared on Logan’s stories (above) pictures the CEO standing next to a beaming Slater underneath a golden banner reading “2 GOATS WALK INTO A SURF SHOP (STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE).”

I have not heard it but also did not know Logan was one of the greatest of all-time.

Did last year’s one-day Trestles final make him such?

Is it a play for equality?

Are there other GOATs milling amongst us of whom we are woefully unaware?

Are you a GOAT?

Much to ponder.