Kelly Slater survives sudden-death elimination round at Margaret River Pro; wild scenes in warm-up session as wildcard Jacob Willcox takes on Hawaiian hard-man Zeke Lau!
Ten hours of competition and four competitors eliminated, three wildcards and poor Seth Moniz.
We’ve had two days of competition at Margaret River already, three if you’re counting both men and women, more than ten solid hours of competitive surfing on the men’s side, and what are we left with?
Elimination of Jack Thomas, Ben Spence, Jacob Wilcox and Seth Moniz.
Two surfers we’ve never heard of and might not again. One whom we recognise as a previous early exiting wildcard, and poor Seth Moniz.
The most interesting contribution that Jacob Wilcox made was “words” with Zeke Lau in the morning warm up, following a drop-in and a flicked board from Zeke.
The idea that the number of surfers in each event needs to decrease is a firmly beaten drum. I’ve always quite liked the variety of surfers, styles and talents and felt a diverse field was more interesting, but I have to concede this is dead wrong.
As surfers we venerate the stylists and the specialists, but competition is competition. Talent matters, but winning mentalities matter more.
It has also been strikingly apparent recently that the selection of wildcards needs to be better. It’s not consistent, nor effective. Some are chosen by sponsors, some by the WSL, but few are successful in heats. For the most part, you can safely pencil them in to exit at the earliest possible opportunity.
If a wildcard is to be granted let’s try and make it worthwhile. The idea of the local wildcard is lovely and romantic, but rarely lives up to the potential. Pipe specialists excepted.
Wildcards need to be chosen more carefully, more Barron Mamiya than Mikey Wright. More Jay Davies than Jack Thomas. If a wildcard is not a genuine threat they’re simply useless fodder that sucks away meaningful competition time.
So anyway, thankfully the comp starts now.
What do we think of the forecast? Conclusion of the women’s today, perhaps, followed by a couple of lay days waiting for the next swell?
More Main Break at the beginning of next week?
Or perhaps The Box this weekend?
Any Margaret River aficionados below the line please fill us in.
Regardless, it looks like waves ahead and some more key decision making for Jesse Miley-Dyer. Given recent events, they are perhaps decisions that could be decisive in whether or not she remains in a job that has looked less and less tenable.
You might say it’s make or break time. In fact, my guess is they’ll sack her anyway because it’s good TV.
What do you like in the round of 32?
The match-ups change complexion depending on where they surf, of course, and keen-eyed gamblers will be taking note of this. (Remember when Jack Robinson was matched against Filipe with the latter as a heavy favourite according to bookmakers? These are the opportunities a bold man might retire on.)
I’ll enjoy the all Aussie battler match-up between Callum Robson and Morgan Ciblic in H3. Ciblic, of course, needs the win if we’re to see him again.
Two all American boys face off in H4 in with Coffin vs Colapinto. Conner needs the victory to avoid the cut, but given recent form he must be wishing it was a spelling bee rather than a surf comp.
Italo vs Joao Chianca in H7 looks like a potential banger. Keep a close eye on this one. It’s the kind of heat where the presiding narrative might lead to some unconscious judging bias. Everyone believes Joao belongs on Tour, and Italo is the emerging villain.
What drama might we see in a close heat? Don’t be surprised if Joao pips him at the post. Stand by for more dazzling bejeweled rage in the aftermath.
I like the look of the goofy match-up with Miguel Pupo vs Owen Wright in H8. Owen needs the win. Is he a man campaigning for The Box?
Jadson needs to beat Kelly in H13 to have any chance of staying on Tour. He’s been here before. Don’t bet against him.
Then it’s a tasty battle of the power brokers in H14 with Jordy vs Zeke. Expect full rail gouges and mean mugging.
Zeke needs the win, Jordy almost as much. A quarter final defeat in Portugal is far and away Jordy’s best result of the season to date. He’s a man who should be aiming for the top and he’ll need to put his foot down quick.
I’m all in, as they say.
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Yasmin (left) and Gabriel in happier times.
Gabriel Medina’s sordid love triangle featuring now ex-wife Yasmin Brunet and step-father Charlie the scintillating focus of universally-praised TV series “Make or Break” second episode!
Surf media is falling all over itself to heap the most superlative praise on Apple+ Television’s just released series Make or Break though is it all deserved or another example, in continuous string, of our kind just gagging to be noticed? I’ll be extremely honest with you. I was worried it was the later after watching episode one. Tyler Wright’s narrative felt canned and the lack of genuine stakes seemed ridiculous what with non-stop hyperbole gushing from interviewed mouths.
Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew, I think, said of last year’s tour, the one being filmed, “This is the greatest assemblage of talent in the history of the sport.”
Um, no.
Also, “Any of these guys could beat anyone.”
Also no.
11x champion Kelly Slater, speaking of Pipeline’s deadliness, declared, “It’s super dangerous. Somebody dislocated their shoulder this morning.”
As a chronic dislocater, not dangerous or deadly.
Etc. Etc. Etc. and I was concerned heading into episode two, The Brazilian Storm, especially when it began “Filipe Toledo is the most dangerous competitor on the world tour.”
? unless “dangerous” and “dislocated shoulder” are now synonymous.
But then magic begins to unspool albeit slowly. The cameras focus on Gabriel Medina and his then wife Yasmin Brunet early. Medina having split from step-father Charlie and mother in order to make his own way with archival footage and tears. It flips to Italo Ferreira and his childhood friend and traveling partner who makes him smoothies and also admits to not being appreciated. Andy King is unveiled as Medina’s new coach, more tears flow, Medina and Ferreira go back and forth winning and losing events on the Australian leg, Filipe Toledo, the aforementioned “most dangerous” pops in and out and scene.
The subtle insights are fascinating but the real glory, for us honest-to-goodness professional surf watchers, is this bizarre time capsule. We know that Medina divorced Brunet and quit the tour for a mental break, for example, and to observe him shooting daggers through her when she tells him to “surf for fun,” when she says, “People think I am going to derail his career” are pure gold.
Kafka could not have written it better.
And so the only complaint I was left with was a lack of insight from us honest-to-goodness professional surf watchers. The camera follows Ferreira, for example, into a live Ain’t That Swell show and my gracious if that doesn’t look wildly fun but neither Jed Smith nor Vaughn Blakey are interviewed. Instead, Stace Galbraith and Luke Kennedy are utilized in the “surf journalist” role. Now, I’m sure both are wonderful but neither are vicious and we (read: you) are vicious.
That bit is missing, honest-to-goodness analysis, criticism, hot-takes from The People™. It appears, through the episode, that “surf fans” are pure, spooning down the storylines churned out by our World Surf League, which seems a miss.
A small complaint, though, especially when episode two flips to episode three and Jay “Bottle” Thompson reveals the origins of his nickname.
Eight hours of non-elimination surfing in big, wonky waves.
It took an age for this competition to start. Five straight lay-days can certainly take the wind out of your sails.
But when it did we were ushered in with a familiar script, swell on tap, vineyards, great local foods, arresting nature – visually, spiritually, sexually even…
And don’t forget all manner of creatures trotting, swimming and swooping two-by-two through wide expansive landscapes.
Western Australia is paradise, don’t you know.
Part surf competition, part government-funded tourist drive, same as it ever was.
The waves showed up, not perfect in shape, but more than sufficient in size.
Not all competitors wanted to surf, according to Richie Lovett. They’d been making their voices heard about the suitability of conditions, some clearly preferring to wait for a little less size, a little more form.
You have to shake off that negative mindset, said Richie. If you’re surfing, you’re surfing. If you paddle out in the wrong frame of mind you will surely lose.
He was dead right, of course.
Pondering this, I realised it’s exactly the sort of information that could help someone make a lot of money betting on surfing. If you had a sense of someone’s mind in these pre-heat moments, you might have a sense of their performance to come.
I like these feisty new voices, whoever they are, and you can’t blame them for seeking the best canvas on which to perform their dubious art.
Personally I enjoy the heats when the waves are less than perfect. Seeing the best cope with challenge is illuminating, at least from a very niche and arguably masochistic perspective.
I was all aboard the WSL hype train early, hearing there was a massive swell in the water. Surely this meant full-bore competition surfing at its finest: death-defying drops; competitors surfing for their lives and livelihoods, make or break; and full-rail carves that left water suspended in the air like the slackened jaws of fans at home.
But it wasn’t quite like that.
It was simply eight hours of non-elimination surfing in big, wonky waves. There were scrappy heats, warbles in the face, bouncy carves that were visually unappealing and never quite in control.
Main Break looked wild and wooly, like a worse version of the worst version of Bells that is so heavily criticised.
One man who muscled his way through the adversary of not only his competitors but the warbly faces of a wave he’d never surfed before was Callum Robson. In an all rookie match-up for the opening heat of the day he dispatched Sammy Pupo and Imai deVault, leading early and throughout.
Despite the laydays he’s clearly carrying some momentum from Bells, and there seems no reason why he could not also do well here. Is he Australia’s new Great White Hope? It might be a tussle with Ethan Ewing, but he has a blue-collar appeal vaunted by so many Australians.
Well, perhaps aside from the wine-quaffing, neighbour-shaming puritan type of Australian that seems to frequent Swellnet. The type with a drawer dedicated to instruction manuals. The type who could give you the ins and outs of a cat’s arsehole about the various merits of pressure washers.
Not those kind. The good kind. The kind like Robbo himself. He’s got to be Robbo, right? Or more likely: RRRROBBOOOOOOOOOO…
From new hope we transitioned to fading hope.
Given the early heat and the well documented fact Kelly doesn’t like mornings, he was a fairly safe bet to visit another losers round.
I did appreciate the interaction with the small boy who approached him as he came out of the water. The boy was decked out in a Slater jersey with a pen at the ready, too young to understand the nuances of adult moods. Slater glanced at him, seemed halfway to silently mouthing Fuck Off and scything through the child’s very soul with a laser death stare, before noting the camera and donning his mask.
Good on him, I thought, even if it was just for the camera.
Later, during a post-heat breakdown Shannon claimed that “Kelly was just on fire” in his heat. This was slightly confusing given that he was in last place for the entire heat, but I presume her psychological conditioning took over for a moment.
John Florence cantered through the next heat against easy opposition, but not without producing a turn that you might watch then watch again. It was the kind of tip-to-tail carve that makes your rectus femoris burn to witness. The kind of turn that sold thousands of Pyzel Ghosts.
John occupies a lonely pedestal in the minds of many. Moments like this show it’s not without some justification, but WCT events are not expression sessions.
However, this is a competition that has been good to Florence, and there’s a world in which this becomes a pivotal and season defining moment.
Additional title threats Kanoa and Filipe both negotiated first round victories with middling scores on a day when middling scores were more than enough.
On paper Filipe looked fragile against Owen Wright in a meaty swell. In all transparency I bet significantly against him. But he’s the most recent champion here, and at some point the narrative that he can’t compete in waves of a certain size or power will change.
With further transparency I’ll admit that I missed the next three heat victories of Italo, Ethan and O’Leary. (I’ve had to fact check that last one a couple of times. Connor O’Leary, first round heat victory? Unlikely but apparently no less true).
You’ll forgive me for the absence, but it was somewhere around five or six am and I needed at least an hour of sleep before work.
Please let me know if I missed anything significant. I haven’t had a chance to catch up today and in all likelihood I won’t.
There’s nothing captivating about sports on replay, less so the opening rounds of a CT event. It wouldn’t take me long to count the number of heats I’ve watched after the fact. There is nothing compelling about a recorded version of something already on record. Live sport exists in the moment, and beyond that moment it is diminished to such an extent that only the very greatest moments will live on. Even then they can only have a fraction of the original impact.
I tend to consume pro-surfing in a dreamlike state, time zones as they are. Something I’ve considered is the fact that if a new audience was to come, then it would likely be from Europe and mainland USA. As such, something must be done to make the format more palatable and easier to consume without slipping from consciousness for the sake of watching live sport.
The answer to this, in part, is to make it much, much shorter.
I woke to Joao Chianca’s victory in a tough-looking heat in terms of quality of opponent and waves. He seems to be the poster boy for the anti-cut brigade, the one surfer people on both sides of the debate feel should be saved, somehow. Perhaps he’ll do it through his own performance here. If not I strongly suspect there’ll be some wildcards in his future.
The opening round concluded with victories for Leo and Griff. Notable for me was the fate of poor Seth Moniz, consigned to the loser’s round for the second comp in a row, somewhat confusingly for such a talented and vibrant surfer.
Given what we saw of him at Pipe, surfing the final against Kelly so exhausted that he could barely speak, if you told me he was suffering chronic fatigue as a result I wouldn’t question it.
More notable was another delightful phone in from Shaun Tomson!
He provided less spiritual meandering this time but just as much comedic drivel. Jordy is the “god of power”, according to Shaun. No-one on Tour can stand next to him in this regard. Furthermore, he’s a cross between Joel Parkinson and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Thanks for that, Shaun. What a gruesome beast that must be.
And with that I went to work.
Margaret River Pro Men’s Opening Round 1 Results:
HEAT 1: Callum Robson (AUS) 12.17 DEF. Imaikalani deVault (HAW) 10.00, Samuel Pupo (BRA) 9.83
HEAT 2: Jackson Baker (AUS) 12.03 DEF. Barron Mamiya (HAW) 10.77, Matthew McGillivray (ZAF) 10.17
HEAT 3: Ezekiel Lau (HAW) 15.00 DEF. Ryan Callinan (AUS) 13.37, Kelly Slater (USA) 9.20
HEAT 4: John John Florence (HAW) 15.60 DEF. Lucca Mesinas (PER) 8.93, Jacob Willcox (AUS) 8.44
HEAT 5: Kanoa Igarashi (JPN) 13.10 DEF. Conner Coffin (USA) 8.50, Ben Spence (AUS) 7.70
HEAT 6: Filipe Toledo (BRA) 13.00 DEF. Owen Wright (AUS) 9.63, Jack Thomas (AUS) 6.90
HEAT 7: Italo Ferreira (BRA) 14.17 DEF. Jake Marshall (USA) 13.26, Jadson Andre (BRA) 6.17
HEAT 8: Ethan Ewing (AUS) 13.70 DEF. Nat Young (USA) 10.90, Deivid Silva (BRA) 7.63
HEAT 9: Connor O’Leary (AUS) 13.80 DEF. Morgan Cibilic (AUS) 12.90, Caio Ibelli (BRA) 9.24
HEAT 10: Joao Chianca (BRA) 12.43 DEF. Kolohe Andino (USA) 11.87, Miguel Pupo (BRA) 6.27
HEAT 11: Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA) 11.33 DEF. Jordy Smith (ZAF) 11.17, Seth Moniz (HAW) 6.50
HEAT 12: Griffin Colapinto (USA) 14.07 DEF. Jack Robinson (AUS) 11.47, Frederico Morais (PRT) 11.43
Margaret River Pro Men’s Elimination Round 2 Matchups:
HEAT 1: Kelly Slater (USA) vs. Jadson Andre (BRA) vs. Jack Thomas (AUS)
HEAT 2: Caio Ibelli (BRA) vs. Deivid Silva (BRA) vs. Ben Spence (AUS)
HEAT 3: Miguel Pupo (BRA) vs. Frederico Morais (PRT) vs. Jacob Willcox (AUS)
HEAT 4: Seth Moniz (HAW) vs. Samuel Pupo (BRA) vs. Matthew McGillivray (ZAF)
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Tyler and coach Kekoa Bacalso watch Pipe from balcony of Rip Curl house, "Yeah, nah, ain't going out," says Tyler.
Two-time world champ Tyler Wright breakout star in opening gambit of Apple TV series Make Or Break; slams surfing’s chronic misogyny, “Look at the first event, boys are at Pipe, women are at Maui… at the same time, fuck, it’s Pipe”
“It’s a high-risk wave. Personally, as an individual, no, I don’t want to go and surf Pipe."
There is no more compelling story within pro surfing than the Wright family.
Even the most cursory examination reveals myriad story lines: the two-time world champ Tyler who won a tour event at fourteen, qualified at sixteen and who threw it in briefly before returning to the tour and carving and plating her two titles.
Mikey? Hot and salty and greasy (like a sunbathing German) and a sometime wildcard.
And, all three of ‘em swindled for a total of $1.5 million after a family friend turned bookkeeper salted agambling addiction with the storied surfers’ cash.
A lovely field to plough.
In the first episode of the seven-part Apple TV series Make or Break, we are transported back to December 2020, to the commencement of the 2021 tour.
Tyler Wright is the hub upon which the episode revolves. Wright, often combative, is curiously tranquil here, eyes with a new placid look, sheepish even, although she lights up when it comes to men etc.
“Surfing is sexist,” says Wright. “Look at the sexism within surfing. You do look at the first event. Boys are at Pipe, women are at Maui… historically, the women haven’t been allowed to have a permit at Pipe.”
Wright’s wish for a Pipe showdown is granted when a man is killed by a shark at Honolua Bay during the event’s waiting period forcing tour organisers to shift the final from Maui to Oahu.
“I believe in the women on tour,” she says at a meeting to discuss the shift. “It’s an opportunity missed if we don’t show up. It’s a moment in women’s surfing history. At the same time, fuck, it’s Pipe.”
Cameras follow Wright’s prep for Pipe final with Hawaiian Carissa Moore. Her coach is Kekoa Bacalso – the Hawaiian-born 2009 ASP Rookie of the Year; shaper is the wizard behind John John Florence’s boards, Jon Pyzel.
We sit on the deck of the Rip Curl house as Wright examines a four-to-six-foot day and admits she wouldn’t want to surf it recreationally.
“It’s a high-risk wave. Personally, as an individual, no, I don’t want to go and surf Pipe… I’m happy not to go out just now,” she says. “Yeah, nah, ain’t going out…”
Wright wins event, Carissa second.
Episode shifts to Kelly and John John at Pipe. Ep two, Gabriel vs Italo.
Make or Break premieres tomoz on Apple TV. Sign up for the free trial, watch the eps, get out.
