Will we see G-Land decided by psycho airs over dry reef? As admirable as that sort of bravery is, let’s hope not.
Tell me, how over is the Indo dream? I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently, the way a man does when he reaches certain ages and stages and finds himself reflective.
Surfing is the ultimate pastime for memories in hues of gold. It’ll never again be as good as it was ten years ago, last week, yesterday.
It was always better an hour ago.
My experience of Indonesia is thin. A month and a half spent flitting between Bali and Java when the Sari Club was still Bintangs not bombs, and my primary concerns were the satitations of mind and body out of the water.
Youth is wasted on the young, as we know.
But even then I’d missed the real Indo dream by decades. What has happened in a further twenty years?
Today was not the finest example of what G-Land or the archipelago at large can produce, but nor was it the worst. For most of us I’m certain it would’ve been more than welcome. To have the vastness of that line-up to ourselves? That would still be enough.
The water sparkled, the winds were light and the line-up was pristine and empty. There was a dreamlike quality about the whole thing. Despite not being perfect, it was different enough to feel fresh. Looking into the sun and at some distance away there’s an almost voyeuristic sensation. There were no crowd shots, there was no background noise of beach announcers, and no watery microphone static.
Strider lay in a hammock. There was certainly an affectation in his sleepy delivery, but it echoed the atmosphere of the event as a whole.
It was almost peaceful. Not competition, just surfing.
I wasn’t the only one dreaming of the late 90s this week. The most vivid dreams surely belonged to the pundits. The voices of Luke Egan and Tom Carroll were heavy with the weight of bliss, imbued with the memories of moments come and gone. You can hardly blame them.
Visions of the 1997 Quik Pro haunted today, as Surfads predicted. Competitors too young to remember – or not yet born – had clearly used footage of the comp as a primer. John Florence, a mere five years old at the time, noted as much in his post-heat interview.
Everyone was worried about John for the first thirty minutes of his heat. He had barely caught a wave. All we knew was that he strapped on an industrial-looking knee brace pre-heat. His face gave nothing away, silent and unfathomable as ever.
For me, Florence has an aura of power more tangible than usual at G-Land. It’s a wave that demands a degree of technicality that you never doubt in his game. More importantly, there’s less fanfare here. The scaled back production dictated by the location means the focus is squarely on surfing. This suits John. If there ever was to be a reimagined format that relied on strike missions to remote locations, one that reduced both the field and the pandering to tourist boards, would you ever doubt him?
By heat end, the worries about the mystery knee injury were quelled, for now. He was less Forrest Gump, and more Universal Soldier. He took the lead on back-to-back waves with just five minutes left. For the first, he backdoored a short, clean tube on a wave that was barely head-high, yet sufficient given the inconsistency of conditions. The second was bigger, justified with two backhand hacks and a cover-up to finish for a low eight. It was the highest score of the heat and assured a comfortable victory.
Another man with reason to be reflective was Kelly Slater. I noted the little water splashes at the beginning of his heat. They’ve become somewhat of a Slater trademark when he’s feeling spiritual and/or desperate. He believes he can conjure waves into existence. Pundits talked about how Kelly was feeling, how happy he was, that his mind was in a good place. Look out, they told us. A happy Kelly is a dangerous Kelly. True, perhaps, but not without waves. His opening wave demonstrated the flow he was obviously feeling. Right until he got clipped at the end.
His water splashing incantations will need to be more powerful than ever to summon something from this forecast. There is no doubt Slater could be masterful here if the water gods allow it.
But what we might see from Medina, both here and over the next few months, is the weight on everyone’s mind.
For us, there’s excitement; for his rivals, fear.
A pre-recorded clip of Kelly told us that Gabriel had been in Indonesia for weeks. Despite being absent from competition, he was “probably more prepared than anyone”, according to Slater.
As the sun sank low he assured a comfortable victory over Callum Robson and Sammy Pupo, but there was little in the way of a spectacular return. An eager start, he took several waves early, pumping his way down the line on shoulder-high closeouts. Each pump seemed to build the sense of anticipation we felt. We wanted a mind-blowing return where we might sit back and feel a heady mix of relief, satisfaction and joy.
But it was not to be.
Instead, it was a patchy sort of victory. Pupo and Robson had two of the better waves of the heat early on, but neither could make them count.
A surfer who did make his opportunity count was Indonesian wildcard Rio Waida. Fresh from his victory in the Sydney Challenger series event, he dispatched weighty opponents in Filipe Toledo and Nat Young.
I confess to knowing absolutely nothing about him. He’s 22, apparently. Born in Japan to mixed Japanese and Indonesian parentage, moving to Indonesia when he was five. By the look of things, this was also right around the time his profile pic for the WSL website was taken.
Let’s see what else he can do, it’s always worth supporting a wildcard who has a good dig.
For the world’s best, however, today did not deliver the waves of their pre-event fever dreams. Nor are we likely to see those types of waves during this waiting period. The week after? Pumping.
Deflating for us and the athletes? More than a little.
Richie Porta’s pre-event breakdown told us that judges would be focused on barrels and barrels only. They wanted to see surfers deep and disappeared, he said. There were some cover-ups today but they were forced and brief. It looks like that might be the story of the event to come, more’s the pity.
Will we see G-Land decided by psycho airs over dry reef? As admirable as that sort of bravery is, let’s hope not.
