Surfing’s richest fantasy league down to
final eighteen contestants, with only one picking Jack Robinson to
win!
By Taylor Lobdell
Seventeen for Pip, one for Jackie in BeachGrit's
Surfival League!
The Final Five at Trestles will determine the winner of
the Surfival League, who’ll scoop up the three gees cash
and three-board quiver from Panda.
There’s 2% of the original league left. That’s 18 people.
Full picks and prayers below.
We got 17 league members riding Filipe Toledo to supposed
Surfival Glory and one brave soul picked Jack Robinson.
The Surfival Gods shine favorable light upon that pick.
If Filipe wins, the person closest to the final heat score total
will win.
What if Italo wins? The winner will be the person with the
highest cumulative points this season.
That would be the one and only Tom P out of New South Wales.
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Feisty Pip and daddy Ricky.
Comment live, Rip Curl WSL Finals, Lower
Trestles, “There will be a lot of pressure on Filipe Toledo, people
chatting about his performance at Pipeline and Teahupoo!”
By Derek Rielly
Pip Toledo against the world!
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"If you look at past world champions, you look at John
John and Gabriel and Kelly Slater, they are all incredible surfers
at Teahupoo and Pipeline… to be the world champion, you have to
perform in all the venues.”
In explosive podcast exchange, WSL CEO Erik
Logan addresses world number one Filipe Toledo’s historic Teahupoo
failure on eve of Rip Curl Finals Day, “Is that really my world
champion? Am I really gonna put on a Filipe jersey?”
By Derek Rielly
“I’m in tune with what the community is
saying…people were very judgemental on how he surfed,” responds the
one-time Cocaine Cowboy lookalike CEO.
This time tomoz, logic points to world number one Filipe
Toledo, a Brazilian ex-pat who now calls San Clemente home,
being crowned world champion at Lower Trestles.
His challengers, Jack Robinson, Ethan Ewing, Italo Ferreira and
Kanoa Igarashi, will have to summon the sort of superhuman reserves
of stamina usually only found in churchgoing women with plastic
vibrating dildos, as well as an inconceivable leap in performance
to match the world’s best surfer in waves three feet and
under.
But there’s a hitch, a caveat to Toledo’s forthcoming
glory.
The Brazilian, who is twenty-seven, has come under fire in
recent weeks following his historic failure to catch a meaningful
wave at pumping six-to-eight-foot Teahupoo.
Now, the WSL’s CEO Erik Logan has addressed pro surfing’s
elephant in the room on The Boardroom Podcast with Scott Bass.
There’s a little back and forthing between the two about Finals
Day, Logan pointing out that if it didn’t exist “Filipe would’ve
won his world title in a house or sitting on the beach at Teahupoo
after the elimination round after someone else lost.”
What follows is an explosive exchange between the pair when
Bass, despite adding a bank of caveats to his question, oh I
love Toledo etc, says, “If you watch that first heat of him
surfing at Teahupoo, you’re kinda like, Is that really my world
champion? Am I really gonna put on a Filipe jersey? Am I feeling
that.”
In a final spasm of honesty, Bass adds, “When you look at the
Vans Pipe Masters, guess who’s not gonna get an invite, Filipe
Toledo !”
Hot!
Logan, potent as ever, tries to douse the flames.
“I think, to be fair to Filipe, certainly, again, I’m in tune
with what the community is saying, I read too much, people were
very judgemental on how he surfed. The counter to that is, he went
out and surfed good in his next heat.”
Logan then applied the Chris Cote argument, that Toledo wasn’t
terrified at all, but as cunning as a fox.
“The reality was, he was the number one surfer in the world and
he’s playing the long game, he’s playing the game of, ‘I’m not
throwing myself over the ledge and potentially getting hurt.’”
Toledo’s thinking, theorised Logan, was, “I have the number one
seed and people are having to come to me, which is going to be
four-to-six at my home break. Come get me.”
“As incredible as he is at Lowers, I feel there will be a lot of
pressure on him this year at Lowers and a lot of people chatting
about what we just brought up, about his performance at places like
Pipeline and Teahupoo and if you look at past world champions, you
look at John John and Gabriel and Kelly Slater, they are all
incredible surfers at Teahupoo and Pipeline… to be the world
champion, you have to perform in all the venues.”
Opinion: Southern Californians have either
lost their ever-loving minds or the kook apocalypse is well and
truly upon us!
By Chas Smith
Idiocracy.
Today is the hottest Southern California’s Ocean
Pacific has been in ten years. Science declares it is 73.4
degrees Fahrenheit (23 degrees celsius, 2876 degrees Surfline) but
it sure felt warmer. The air is 89. I just got out of the water,
hair still dripping, after surfing a fun little wedge. There was no
bite, upon entry. Not one tiny little clench of the jaw. It felt
like getting into a lukewarm bathtub.
And here’s where things get bizarre. I paddled out into the
lineup on my Album twin (5’10) sat in the lineup and studied the
men around me. There were four sitting on the peak, three more down
the beach, three more up the beach.
Each of them was wearing a wetsuit.
One a jacket, the rest full on long-legged, long-armed 3/2s.
Why?
What in the world is happening?
Surfing wetsuit-less is one of life’s great joys and only
happens for two, maybe three months a year here. Why would any of
those minutes be covered with constricting, extra-hot neoprene?
The only conclusions I could draw, while bobbing near nude with
only a pair of Ola Canvas
trunks covering unseemly bits, were either that Southern
Californians had lost their ever-loving minds, spending too much
time driving solo in cars with masks covering nose/mouth/too much
time walking solo outside with masks covering nose/mouth or the
kook apocalypse has fully and completely arrived with “surfing” and
“wetsuit” synonymous.
Or is there some other reason that SURFERS ARE WEARING FULL
WETSUITS IN A MASSIVE AND HISTORIC HEATWAVE?
Help.
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Rich blow-in seeking Triple Crown confronted by North
Shore locals.
Rumor: North Shore locals “bitterly
opposed” to re-imagined Vans Triple Crown format as it perpetuates
ugly economic inequalities, slapping working-class surfers directly
in the face!
By Chas Smith
Haves vs. Have Littles.
Last year, or maybe the year before (who really
knows anything anymore in these the Covid/Post-Covid years of our
lives), surfing’s iconic Triple Crown was re-imagined. Previously,
it was a simple but wonderful formula. The surfer holding highest
combined event results from Haleiwa, Sunset and mighty Pipeline was
crowned and there, by the grace of God, went we.
Things changed, though, thanks to the aforementioned lung
disease and it was turned into a video submission thing wherein, I
guess, surfers enter their best clips from each wave and get voted
upon (?).
Equal opportunities for all!
Or are there?
A well-placed source with a finger on the North Shore pulse has
declared that majority of locals are “bitterly opposed” to the new
format.
“The elite guys have full-fledged production teams with two to
three Red cameras on land and drones covering every blip but the
average guys can’t afford full-time teams so feel it’s unfair,
skewed, impossible and a waste of time chasing. At least in a
contest it’s a level playing field, but when it’s all based on
video clips the haves vs. the have littles are at such a distinct
disadvantage. There’s heavy grumbling.”
It makes very much sense but also causes me to wonder. Will Meta
CEO and world’s sixth richest man Mark Zuckerberg toss his cap into
the ring? Oh, I know he has fallen out of love with surfing but
imagine what he could do with his production capabilities.
Win, I’d imagine, then hang it over ex-BFF Kai Lenny’s head like
the world’s largest lei.
