Louie Hamilton, spotted by TMZ sports at Jonah HIll's
Malibu Paradise. | Photo: TMZ Sports
BIPOC race-car hero Lewis Hamilton escapes
FI racism imbroglio with surf session at Jonah Hill’s secret Malibu
paradise! “The guy clearly knows what he’s doing … propping himself
up on the board and maintaining his balance throughout the
run!”
With his trademark sun-kissed braids pulled into a sensible bun,
Hamilton was filmed out paddling a man on the shoulder of a little
wave before brutally fading what appears to be a uterus-bearer on
the inside.
The thirty-seven-year-old world #6 polishes off the wave with a
cool “what-me-worry” style, even hooking his anchor through several
small turns.
“The guy clearly knows what he’s doing … propping himself up on
the board and maintaining his balance throughout the run (no
porpoising here, thankfully),” writes TMZ Sports.
What I saw was pro surfing that in certain moments felt
like meaningful sport. The quality of the waves was at times
rendered irrelevant by surfers with the enthusiasm and skillset to
perform regardless. This is a magic touch for this
game.
Brazil is everything pro surfing needs to
be: “Give me passion, fury, tears, and death threats. I want epic
battles. Even if that means dirty surfing and compromised style for
scores!”
By JP Currie
And there was evening and there was morning, and
then there was J-Bay.
Give me an entirely Brazilian finals day any
day.
Give me passion, fury, tears, and death threats. Give me
whistling that could piece armour. Give me writhing throngs of
tanned bodies yowling their support for countrymen doing battle in
mediocre waves.
Shit, give me all powerful deities that mainline professional
surfing for kicks.
Brazil is what pro surfing needs to be.
This was clear from the hooter today as Italo Ferreira and Sammy
Pupo battled for the first wave, Ferreira paddling partially over
Pupo’s back. It wasn’t clear if words were exchanged before or
after, but the contact was enough for Italo to flip his board over
and examine it for damage.
Countrymen they may be, friends uncertain, but it was clear that
both were happy to leave the water with the steely taste of blood
in their mouths.
That’s what competition is.
It was clear again at heat end when Pupo sat on Italo holding
priority. He held a narrow lead built in the opening exchanges and
the waves had been slow ever since.
Ferreira managed to sell him on a dud with less than a minute
left, and in doing so gave himself one last swing. He needed
something in the range of seven when he took off on a smaller
wave.
He surfed it hard, claimed it harder, and it was not enough.
Back to the drawing board once again for Italo. Despite sitting
comfortably third in the rankings, he’s still looking for his first
final of the year.
Next into the arena were Filipe Toledo and Yago Dora. The
additional ceremony of the surfers standing side-by-side on the
blue carpeted runway that led from the event site to the beach was
a nice touch. It had the tone of a UFC face-off at the weigh-in and
added drama amidst the baying crowd. It should be a regular
feature.
Turpel, with his inimitable psilocybiny delivery, called them
“two very peaceful human beings”.
Presumably he found somewhere to park his flying saucer.
The scoring in the second semi was erratic.
(A quick aside, to watch this I had to go to YouTube because the
WSL app wasn’t working. It often fails in its most basic purpose of
actually showing the surfing. As a power-user, this causes me great
anguish.)
With his first two waves Yago Dora had Filipe comboed, thanks to
an 8.67 that seemed as dubious as his moustache.
(He does look quite Gerry-like though, right? Do you think he
took Ashton’s flirtation to heart?)
Toledo quickly broke combo with an 8.43 which to my eye didn’t
look cleanly finished. Somewhere, Caroline Marks should have been
apoplectic and appalled.
Judges continued to be unnerved by Pritamo loitering over their
shoulders and overriding their scores, giving Toledo a 4.93 for an
alley-oop that would’ve scored in the high eights for Jackson
Baker.
I was building IKEA furniture whilst I watched the replay of
this, a small desk for the corner of my bedroom where I sit now,
for rolling out of bed in unsociable hours to tap out missives
about surfing.
The end product is fine. It does a necessary job, but it is
cheap, flimsy and underwhelming.
This is essentially how Filipe’s aerial surfing sometimes
appears, flat-pack furniture.
The judges in their own flimsy tower clearly regretted reacting
to Pritamo’s barks and compensated for the 4.93 by awarding an 8.93
and heat victory to Toledo for two turns.
On balance he probably won it, but I looked at the pieces of
white lacquered MDF laid out in front of me and sighed, knowing
things could be better.
Chris Cote knew this, too, with a working man’s highbrow
allusion to Hemmingway.
“Courage is grace under pressure,” he said. I was unsure of the
context.
Fair play to Cote, though.
Even if he is occasionally the auditory equivalent of a Jackson
Pollock painting, god loves a trier. He sent me a clip of his
“research” the other day on Twitter when I probed him about how
much he prepared. Remind me to share, if you’re interested.
He’s grown on me a bit, to be honest. As, more bizarrely, did
Pete Mel. He was more upbeat than usual, and I’d sooner listen to
his weather knowledge than Kaipo’s mangled meteorology.
The final was a dud, which was a shame because there was a real
sporting crowd in attendance. For once, the noise levels matched
the WSL broadcast team hyperbole. They deserved a competitive
heat.
What they got instead was a shut out from the off, courtesy of
Toledo’s ten.
What did you make of it? It didn’t scream ten points to me, but
perhaps I was fumbling with plastic-packaged dowels.
Afterwards, the vivacious Sammy Pupo just tried too hard,
boosting monster air attempts that disconnected him from both his
board and the likelihood of breaking the combination.
Toledo victory. Near perfect heat. (According to the score, at
least.)
How was Rio for you in the end?
I’d guess I watched a lot more than you.
What I saw was pro surfing that in certain moments felt like
meaningful sport. The quality of the waves was at times rendered
irrelevant by surfers with the enthusiasm and skillset to perform
regardless. This is a magic touch for this game.
Give me a full Brazilian tour and I’d watch. All Brazilian
surfers, venues and crowds.
This is intended as sporting entertainment, and that’s exactly
what this would give us.
As much as I can appreciate the lackadaisical finesse of the
likes of John Florence, I’m happy to watch well-produced versions
of it.
If I’m tuning into live sport I want epic battles. And if that
means a little bit of dirty surfing and compromised style for
scores, then so be it.
If we look upon all that was made, we see it was good.
And there was evening and there was morning, and then there was
J-Bay.
Nice one, god.
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Happy days.
World’s greatest athlete Kelly Slater
removes pants, delivers most stirring interview yet detailing wild
highs and crushing lows: “Just looking down . . . like this would
all be over in a few seconds. That’s where my mind was. . . . I was
suicidal for a minute.”
By Chas Smith
In black and white.
Kelly Slater is the latest coverboy for
legendary athletic publication Sports
Illustrated and provides new insight as to what makes
him tick and how long he plans to keep being the center of our
attentions. The interview begins with the 11x world champion, his
girlfriend, and the journalist Brandon Sneed driving south from LAX
to San Clemente.
It is hot, apparently, so hot that Slater must remove his pants
in order to cool.
It is taken as metaphor.
And, I suppose it is apt. Of all the many Kelly Slater chats
I’ve both conducted and read, this one seems… most raw. The
just-north-of-fifty-year-old discusses his interior garden, for
example, and what seems to be its manic landscape:
Slater says he, too, experiences emotions with a profound
intensity, beyond the norm. Extreme highs and lows. Early on, those
highs came with fame and fortune and that world championship at 20,
clinched at Pipeline. It was a hell of a crest for a self-described
redneck from the Space Coast. But the lows came just as heavy, one
year later. He ended an engagement, he lost the world title and he
found himself six figures in debt. He has never publicly shared the
depths that his anguish reached, but emotionally he felt almost
like he was pinned against the reef again. He says that one night
he found himself at the edge of an apartment building’s roof in
Coolangatta, on Australia’s Gold Coast, with a beautiful view of
the eastern Indian Ocean. He remembers “just looking down . . .
like this would all be over in a few seconds. That’s where my mind
was. . . . I was suicidal for a minute.”
His response to the great blackness:
To quell this he says he tried therapy (but inconsistently
at the time) and antidepressants (but he didn’t like how they
numbed him). He cares too much about his body to escape into drugs,
and he found drinking’s hangover a waste of time. Instead, in these
peaks and valleys, he says surfing became a place to funnel those
emotions, redirecting them toward the waves. “I learned how to
focus and channel that energy [into competition]. It consumed me. I
became really obsessive about it.”
The coming career end:
He can picture it. Surfing just to surf. Maybe he’ll taper
off, a couple of competitions each year, then let it all go.
“There’s a part of everyone that, when they quit, becomes a little
empty,” he says. He does wonder, though, what might fill that void.
“Maybe something could.” But he won’t know until he lets this go.
“Not until [surfing]’s done.”
And the most important lesson he has learned throughout his
half-century:
The big lesson has been simple: “I definitely have learned
to be kinder to myself,” he says. “I used to have a really negative
internal dialogue.”
Who knew?
Tom Brady is also consulted and shares secrets of greatness.
Tony Hawk too. Slater eventually puts his pants on but then,
presumably, takes them off again to get a painful massage wherein
the masseuse castigates him for being a wimp.
Toledo (pictured) being carried through the
throng.
Filipe Toledo scores rare perfect 10 in
final, cuts Sammy Pupo’s heart out and eats in front of rabid
throng of countrymen for Oi Rio Pro win!
By Chas Smith
Most popular boy in Brazil!
The feeling Filipe Toledo must be feeling right
now. Moments ago, the lithe Brazilian starlet dispatched Sammy Pupo
in front of thousands upon thousands of screaming countrymen
packing Saquarema’s sand to win the Oi Rio Pro. Shirtless, wet,
bouncing up and down waving green and gold. Absolutely losing
it.
Toledo did it in style, too, with a perfect 10 hoisted over the
bouncy waves.
He sat in the water for a brief moment, after his victory, then
began shouting, shouting, shouting until he arrived at the shore,
was draped in that green and gold and continued his shouting.
Analysis of his performance will be forthcoming but for now the
feeling, man. That feeling. The most popular boy in Brazil and,
also, solidly number one in the world or at least the World Surf
League. With his win, he sits 10,000 points above second place Jack
Robinson heading into J-Bay, an event he has won before.
The “Final’s Day” at Lower Trestles has felt built for Toledo to
come in third and take the crown. What if, this year, he has such a
crazy, crazy lead at the end but loses to Italo Ferreira?
Well, let’s not think about that now.
Let’s enjoy the moment.
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Pip Toledo, hero to a nation of online
warriors prepared to drip blood into their keyboards to salvage his
honour.
Comment live, finals day, Oi Rio Pro,
“Brazilians are simply the better surfers!”
By Derek Rielly
All Brazilian finals day in Rio! Italo, Pip, Sammy
and Yago!
