"We need to find kids who already have the skills, the balance, the athleticism."

Oh you know how much I love the snow, letting me bore you with my icy adventures semi-regularly, but I have never once considered that sliding down a mountain improves one’s surfing ability. Snow (boarding specifically) and surf share a wonderful extreme DNA but curling, freestyle skiing, bobsled don’t really seem to offer much to each other, in terms of performance, but, once again, it appears as if I am wrong.

Days ago, the Kingdom of Great Britain appointed the chief executive of GB Snowsport’s Vicky Gosling as new chairwoman of GB Surfing.

Britain, coming off a Winter Olympics with a surprising 0, as in zero, medals, is seeking to become an international surfing powerhouse with the ultra-adorable extreme sport prodigy Sky Brown set to make the team.

Gosling will not step down as CEO of Snowport and sees beautiful synergistic possibilities just over the horizon, boldly declaring, “If you ask anybody what I always bang on about, it’s precisely that. How do we do talent ID better? We need to find kids who already have the skills, the balance, the athleticism. We’re looking at gymnastics, we’re looking at skateboarding, at cycling for endurance and cross-country, we’re looking at rowing. I would like to be in a position where you give them a period of 12-18 months where they’re training together, you don’t need to specialise yet – a bit like doing your GCSEs I guess. Build on skills like agility, athleticism – and then let’s see which sport suits you best, or where do we think your skills suit the best. Particularly if you cluster them – so freestyle, or endurance, or speed. Everyone would then be a really strong place to bring them through.”

Sounds very Chinese.

But which other sporting skills, specifically snow skills, could make world-class surfers?

Biathlon?

Oh man. I wish professional surfing was actually like biathlon.

Which of our surfers would be the best shot? What would they shoot at?

Intriguing.

Make the tragic mistake of walking into a comment room!

Gimme a tawny blonde with tawny eyes with deep full breasts thrusting arrogantly and a man-eating look over eight hours of heats any day but here we are, eyes impacted under the merciless repetition of thirty-minute heats, more if the heat restart button is punched.

But, where else can you meet like-minded souls enjoying the masochism of it all, part cruelty, part bonhomie.

Click here to watch the live stream on YouTube; comment below the line.

A tropical cold water between Russkis and locals!

In response to the crisis in Ukraine, there was a gathering of Ukrainians and Russians who in a public park here on Bali were determined to demonstrate for peace.

And among the Russian contingent, a number of them were surfers.

And I suppose this was good PR for the Russian surfers because the Russian surfers who have infiltrated Bali are not the most well-loved group of individuals in the water.

On the contrary.

And for years, there has been a whole mess of ‘em comin’ in over the wire.

So much so that the hipster burg of Canggu has been referred to, in some disgruntled circles, as “Little Moscow”. What with tall, stunning, long legged, super model types swanning into nightclubs and out into the surf with impunity. (And their girlfriends aren’t half bad either.)

But the “Russian attitude” here in Bali surf world has been a generally problematic fit for this Glasnost ignoring set.

Again, generalizing, the Russian contingent, Covid era or not, behave mostly entitled, rude, culturally insensitive and blind in the line-up, having assimilated into the surf scene here with all the sensitivity of bulls in a china shop. Resulting in a sort of tropical cold war between them and some of the local surfers here.

And although thinly tolerated, the authorities have had to take action when these nationals have taken things too far.

Like the Russian knucklehead who posted a video of himself taking a header off the end of a pier atop his rental scooter with a bikini babe riding him piggy back all the way into the drink. He got a hefty environmental fine and a one way ticket to the airport for that caper.

There were also the numerous “Cold War” parties in during the Covid lockdowns that held no regard for, well, anything. Like the full moon Smirnoff and Shroom bacchanal that took place in a Balinese Temple up in Jimbaran that got a favorite surf spot shut down for good.

The scenes of public fornication on this hallowed ground left one prominent Police officer asking “Would we do this in a church in their country?”

Countless trips to the airport after that hullabaloo, let me tell you.

And speaking of hullabaloos, there was the Russian internet porn ring that was busted up in Uluwatu.

Seems the porn producers, with one of Russia’s hottest female porn stars in tow, were looking for “Surfer Types”. Seems the “bulging-gym-head-mob-and-muscle-bound types” had fallen out of favor back in St. Petersburg (Rumour has it that they found numerous enthusiastic volunteers among the surfer set however, including one prominent Aussie pro surfer who was smart enough to wear a Batman motorcycle helmet).

And so it goes here with the Russian surfers, who are not all bad, thank the heavens. I mean, after all, some did join the Ukrainians in a peaceful protest against Russian aggression in Ukraine in a public park on Bali.

Although it’s a shame they didn’t read the rules.

Protests and demonstrations of any kind by non-Indonesians are against the law in this country. The result being the possibility of many trips to the airport for our peace and borscht loving brothers and sisters.

Police videos of the event are currently under scrutiny.

No news yet from the safe houses in “Little Moscow”.

The new Soylent Green.

The surf world awoke this morning to shock, dismay and confusion as a devastating new study revealed that, for years, they have been feeding a sometimes aquatic enemy to greatly cherished loved ones.

Ben Wainwright and Ian French, of Yale-NUS College, Singapore, respectively, have been examining the ingredients of pet food and have concluded that products labeled as containing “white fish” or sometimes “salmon” contain the flesh of shark instead.

Of the 144 samples sequenced, per the study, 45, or roughly a third, contained shark DNA. The Guardian reports, “The most frequently identified species were blue shark, silky shark and whitetip reef shark. The silky shark and the whitetip reef shark are listed as ‘vulnerable’ in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. Products containing DNA of the sicklefin weasel shark, the Caribbean sharpnose shark and the sand tiger shark – all vulnerable species – were also identified.”

Wainright and French, perturbed, declared, “The majority of pet owners are likely lovers of nature, and we think most would be alarmed to discover that they could be unknowingly contributing to the overfishing of shark populations.”

It is possible that the meat is being sheared from the carcasses of sharks that have been illegally caught and finned or, more worrisome, that it is a reflection of a growing shark fishing trade.

Surfers, anyhow, decidedly conflicted. One one hand, sharks have been known to eat surfers. On the other hand, they contribute to a healthy marine balance. How will the tables turn once surfers feed sharks to dogs and cats?

Do any surfers have cats?

More as the story develops.