Breaking News: World’s greatest surf draw Kelly Slater drops out of El Salvador Pro hours ahead of contest start citing injury!

Heartbreak hotel.

There is fourteen-some hours, at time of writing, until the kickoff of the Surf City El Salvador Pro brought to you by Dirk Ziff and excitement hangs heavy in the banana-scented air. Many storylines to follow. For example, John John Florence and his tragic knee injury, Gabriel Medina’s return to tour, mid-way, in order to run the table and win at San Clemente, the world’s most decorated surfer, and its greatest draw, withdrawing citing injury.

Slater was last seen, here, celebrating World Ocean Day by spinning gorgeously at Uluwatu there on Bali otherwise known as the Isle of the Gods.

Ageless.

The north-of-fifty year-old professional looked ageless but, apparently, he somehow became hurt and has therefore withdrawn from Central America’s first championship tour event in… years?

Decades?

North of fifty years?

Difficult to say as it is difficult to pry true information from behind the World Surf League’s patented Wall of Positive Noise™. Did that thing ever get spackled right up in nearby G-Land or what?

The Apple TV smash Make or Break threatened to break the absurd rosy outlook but then 2 foot (3 German male lower leg) Grajagan got sold as “the best contest of the year” and boom.

Back.

Slater’s injury has yet to be announced but it may have to do with not wanting to go to El Salvador during rainy season.

Wet.

Will the 11x champ head to J-Bay, the next tour stop, in order to defend his current number 15 slot?

Currently more questions than answers.

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Photo: @cjay.cinema
Photo: @cjay.cinema

In honor of under-advertised World Ocean Day, ageless Kelly Slater throws textbook tail high air reverse at picturesque Uluwatu!

Poetry a half century in the making.

But are you fifty years young, puttering around the mini golf course, maybe, banking shots near the cup and feeling talented? Running three blocks down the street in order to hand the mailman a letter and beaming pride? Mowing the lawn in one go without a water or toilet break and thinking you may, just might, be the one to beat Father Time?

Well, Kelly Slater, the most accomplished professional surfer ever and current world number fifteen was recently on the holy isle of Bali, plying his trade, throwing tail high air reverses that would make John John Florence blush.

He is now well over the half century mark old.

It must be assumed that he is either now, or will soon be, in El Salvador to participate in the hours-away Surf City El Salvador Pro, maybe on a very fancy yacht, but it would behoove us all to celebrate World Ocean Day by simply gazing at his artistry.

Could you do such flair on a wave at even forty?

Thirty?

Here’s to World Ocean Day and also to the fountain of youth (Syrian heritage).

But, quickly, how did you celebrate? It was on June 8th and I think woefully under-advertised.

Sad.

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"Not yet, my friends. Not yet."
"Not yet, my friends. Not yet."

In wild scene echoing great American folktale John Henry versus The Machine, startup drone company declares it can best German male lower leg for wave measuring accuracy!

Perfection from the heel of das boot up to das knee.

I am currently sitting down to a breakfast of poached eggs in hollandaise, asparagus dusted with chili, pancakes smothered in rhubarb in Germany’s vibrant Berlin. Delicious. Last night, it was the Sleeping Beauty at the Deutch Oper performed with exceptional flair by the Staatsballet. Phenomenal (more later). And there may be nothing this country can do wrong including unlocking the long-debated mystery of how to most accurately measure wave height.

Ahhh the German male’s lower leg. Say it loud and there’s music playing. Say it soft and it’s almost like praying. Scientists from the United States discovered the secret after teutonic Sebastian Steudnter achieved number one surfer in the world status by riding its largest wave. But how to measure? Yes, his lower leg and debates were instantly settled from the low-balling Hawaiian isles to the utterly insane offices of Surfline.

But the bend of history is moving toward automatization. You certainly recall the American folk tale where John Henry, a steel drivin’ man, took on a steam machine in a race to see who could pound the most railway stakes into the ground. Henry won but died in so doing.

And now an evil unmanned drone has set upon the beautiful German male’s lower leg. From industry source Drone DJ:

Meteorologist Teddy Allen and algorithm expert Milan Curic are the driving force behind Henet Wave, a startup they created using a sensor packing drone to accurately measure the size of waves their fellow surfers can never, but ever agree on. The pair has attracted other swell riders and geek-inclined teammates to develop their technique of deploying a UAV equipped with a high-resolution altimeter and sophisticated GPS monitor over breakers. The results have been accurate readings of liquid dimension are currently “calculated” with too much pure eyeballing to be entirely reliable.

The duo formed Henet – from the Egyptian for “pelican”– in 2020 after reading an article about a women’s big wave surfing competition. The piece debated aspects of how winners of competitions were determined, with the element of size oddly being less of a factor than “making” the giant swells – that is, riding them all the way to the end.

“To us the bigger debate should have been the ability to differentiate between a 73-foot wave and a 69-foot wave using subjective methods,” the startup’s website recalls, with Allen and Curic immediately deciding approximative appreciation was flawed to begin with. “Henet was born… (and now) guides surfers into the new world of purely objective real time XXL wave measurement.”

Damn the machine.

Long live the German male’s lower leg.

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Mick, man of the people.

World’s most beloved surfer Mick Fanning auctions five-day vacation at his lavish beachfront house, money raised going to NSW flood victims, “(Mick) and his wife have been working non-stop to raise money for the families”

All hail Saint Mick.

Ain’t a surfer alive, pro or no, who has emerged from the chrysalis of his boozy mid-twenties, without brain or backbone, and transformed into a butterfly as soulful as the three-time world champ Mick Fanning. 

Fanning, who turns forty-two on Monday and who grew up in hard-scrabble Tweed Heads, where life on a bar stool boring hell out of the girls working the taps is about all you can aspire to, has turned into surfing’s greatest philanthropist. 

During “one-in-one-thousand-year” floods on the NSW north coast, an hour or so south of Mick’s joint on the Gold Coast, he spent days on his jetski evacuating the wretched from their watery prisons. 

And, now, Mick is auctioning off a five-day vacation at his Hamptons-themed three-storey house on a eleven-thousand square feet of  beachfront dirt at Bilinga, just across the road from Coolangatta airport there, to raise money for flood victims. 

Mick paid $3.25 mill for the block in 2011 and built the three-level house, complete with elevator, two years later.

It’s the same place, you’ll remember, a mysterious strawberry blonde busted into a couple of years back. 

Sarah Foote, a thirty-nine-year-old from Ballina, “an obsessed mother”, was accused of following Fanning between January 29 and February 4, the break-in allegedly happening on Feb 2.

Foote was accused of sending four letters (“Rambling hand-written letters with accusations of pedophilia, declarations of love for Fanning and thoughts of wanting to kill him”), three by post, one personally delivered.

Each included hand-drawn love hearts, a self-portrait by Ms Foote, and one contained a beaded bracelet.

The excerpts were chilling. 

“I occasionally want to kill you … to end our occasional miserable bullshit … I wouldn’t want to end our best times though. Because I have so much love for you and I would like to see what’s in store for future for us two.”

“You really are a strange man.”

“What is wrong with you? Or for that matter, what is right with you?”

“I can be a real bitch.”

“The places I liked always became marred by murder.”

“I have smelt a murdered corpse in Rockhampton. She was very stinky, worse than any road kill I have ever smelt.”

“I met a kiddie killer, she smothered her baby. Only spent a year in a psychiatric hospital, then was released only to murder another child.”

“IDK when we will incarnate again together in this world.”

Anyway, Mick don’t live there any more, he bought a swinging little joint off the beach with its own skate ramp, “a three-million dollar masterpiece”, but offer enough cash and you could be legally owning the old place for five days. 

Right now, the highest bid is $16,044, the auction part of the Mick Fanning Charity Golf Tournament, being held on June 10. Steph’s got a board in there and former world number one tennis ace Ash Barty is giving a signed racket.

A local real estate agent, Mishy Canning, also involved in the philanthropy game, says Fanning has been a hero over the course of the past few months.

“He was out there in the community and was on the water meeting everyone and was really affected by their stories,” Canning said. “When you’re on the ground seeing how people are affected it’s pretty emotionally daunting. He (Mick Fanning) and his wife have been working non-stop to raise money for the families.”

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Surfer pulled from Melbourne wavepool unconscious and with head injury “collapsed while paddling out and did not hit the wall”

A horror scenario but it was going to happen sooner or later. Heart attacks in middle-aged surfers are common as hell.

A few more details on yesterday’s “serious incident” at Urbnsurf’s only Australian wave tank that has left a man in a critical condition at Royal Melbourne Hospital. 

While the pool’s PR team can’t say much ‘cause of an ongoing police investigation, it can be revealed the surfer, a man in his forties, was pulled from the water unconscious and with a head injury by other surfers who performed CPR on his until the ambo’s turned up. 

A review of the footage, says Urbnsurf, showed “the surfer collapsed while paddling out and did not the hit the wall”. 

The tank owners have done everything right, which ain’t surprising given they’ve practised for this scenario since it opened two years ago.

The pool has been closed until further notice, counselling has been offered to friends of the man and surfers involved in his rescue and police have a free hand to investigate.

Horror scenario but it was always gonna happen.

Heart attacks while surfing are common as hell; a few years back it seemed like middle-aged surfers in the Mentawais were blowing hearts out every other week.

As for head injuries, yeah, it’s surfing, it’s shallow, it’s concrete.

I’ve seen two first-hand. One, a friend, has never gone back.

 

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