The world's least demanding sport!

These days, there are two productive ways to spend your time between empty perfect surf sessions at the Kandui Resort in the Mentawai Islands.

One: You can drink beer.

Or, like Jesse Bowman, a Californian surfer/triathlete and corporate acquisitions/merger manager with very little interest in surf media, you can analyze how much actual time one spends on the actual face of a wave in order to become a WSL World Champion in one season.

Surprisingly, it works out to the same as listening to Joe Turpel bray on for about three heats.

Here are Jesse’s numbers based on averages:

10 Contests
6 heats to win a contest, 5 waves ridden a heat.
….…………………………..
Pipe is a 7 second ride. 5 waves = 35 seconds. Times 6 heats = 210 seconds on the wave face.

Sunset is a 12 sec ride. 5 waves = 60 seconds. Times 6 heats = 360 seconds

Bells is a 20 sec ride. 5 waves = 100 seconds. Times 6 heats = 600 seconds

Margies is a 8 sec ride. 5 waves = 40 sec. Times 6 heats = 240 sec.

Land is a 20 second ride. 5 waves = 100 sec. Times 6 heats = 600 sec.

El Salvador is a 15 sec ride. 5 waves = 75 sec. Times 6 heats = 450 sec

Rio is a 4 sec ride. 5 waves = 20 sec. Times 6 heats = 120 sec.

Jbay is a 40 sec ride. 5 waves = 200 sec. Times 6 heats = 1200 sec

Teahupoo is a 7 second ride. 5 waves = 35 sec. Times 6 heats = 210 sec

Trestles. 15 second ride. 5 waves = 75 sec. Times 3 heats win = 225 sec
….…………………………………………………………………..

Total seconds on the face of a wave: 4215
Total minutes on the face of a wave: 70:25
Total hours on the face of a wave to win a WSL World Title: 1 hour and 35 minutes of surfing (Give or take a few sec’s)

A single grand slam tennis match is twice that.

So again, you too could become a WSL World Champion in about the same time as it takes to watch a re-run of an old Rodney Dangerfield movie.

Easy money, hey?

Save Owen!

It has been quite a week for professional surfing, maybe the most attention paid to our little corner of children who can’t read good by outsiders since 1976, but wow. Quite a week. It all got underway with the official release of Make or Break, a television show that might just may transform professional surfing into a sport watched by more than just thirty middle-aged men. Then came Margaret River and its mid-year cut. Possibly spurned on by the aforementioned Make or Break, mainstream media came swooping right down on the plan, decrying it as “brutal” and “thuggish” especially after surf darling Sally Fitzgibbons was marched to the guillotine and beheaded.

World Surf League CEO, Erik Logan, sensing a potential enraged public, opened up his shit hose full and sprayed The Guardian with, “The redesign has been met by the industry and fans with genuine excitement and we are already seeing significant increases in engagement and viewership. In redesigning the tours and competition framework, we focused on optimising the competition structures to create a dynamic, compelling and long-term sustainable format to compliment the incredible talents of the world’s best surfers. The mid-season cut is a cornerstone of the new framework and allows us to ensure that post-cut events can run in one optimal swell cycle, create a dynamic season-long narrative and drive fan engagement – all of which allow us to drive more revenue so we can continue to invest in the platform of the world’s best surfing.”

But alas, mainstream media followed the headless ex-championship tour surfers to Coolangatta wherein they were forced to compete alongside Adrian Buchan and Chelsea Tuach at the “challenger series” opener Boost Mobile Gold Coast Pro.

Well, Saint Sally inspired with news coming out yesterday that she would be given the “first half of the season” wildcard for the 2023 campaign and also making it into the semifinals where she lost to eventual champion Caitlin Simmers. Mainstream media, mollified there, turned its attention to poor Owen Wright, who, like Fitzgibbons, was decapitated at Margaret River but, unlike her, performed poorly at Snapper, bowing out in the round of 48.

Wright, also, was given no wildcards injury or otherwise.

Fox Sports declared Wright was “Brutally snubbed.”

Yahoo! Sports beat the drum of “unfairness.”

The Washington Post would have added, “It is undignified and beyond comprehension that a man of his stature, an Olympian no less, should be treated so barbarously” if it was not solely focused on covering the Trump presidency.

Logan is yet to respond.

But will this growing chorus provide wings for the Olympic bronze medalist like it did his countrywoman Sally Fitzgibbons? Will we see a tan, rested and ready Owen Wright ahead of 2023 ready to climb back to the top?

Also, does Rip Curl now sponsor 100% of professional surfers?

More questions that answers.

Home improvement.

No proper home is complete without a fine coffee table and no fine coffee table is complete without a large hardcover’d book with glossy pages and colorful pictures resting on its surface. The publisher Taschen is known for printing such books but my persona favorite is the Italian house Rizzoli which just so happened to release the one you need today.

Roaming: Roark’s Adventure Alas is, truly, a work of art. The overall conceit is to “document the routes of a group of iconic surfers, and other adventurers seeking full cultural and thrill-seeking immersion” and includes “journeys to 16 global destinations illustrating the road less traveled, from surf expeditions to Iceland, the Falkland Islands, or Jamaica, to motorcycle journeys through Nepal, rock climbing in Argentina to cliff jumping in Northern Vietnam, and more.”

These traipses are, each, written up beautifully by Roark’s CEO Ryan Hitzel, onetime Surfing Magazine editor Beau Flemister and Roark’s designer Ryan Sirianni and photographed by the best to ever do it including Chris Burkhard, Dylan Gordon and Jeff Johnston.

Flipping through, you will be inspired to slam your laptop screen down and get out amongst it. To live like the pirate you once dreamed of being before that song got scuttled or at least to invite a slapping at a surf trade show.

Adventure awaits.

Buy here.