Roma signs Brazil's fourth-best goofyfooter for Teahupoo Olympic showdown!

Nationality swapping ain’t new when it comes to that dirty two-week sports carnival called the Olympic Games. 

Rare is the country that don’t fast-track an athletically gifted immigrant or wannabe immigrant if it gets a little extra glitter in the country’s medal cabinet. 

Kenyan distance runners, Jamaican springers, Russian wrestlers, Cuban boxers can choose whatever passport they want, pretty much. 

The Cuban-born British triple jumper Yamilé Aldama, for one, has competed for Cuba, Britain and the  Sudan. 

Sao Paulo’s Jesse Mendes, who doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting to Teahupoo in 2024 with a triumvirate of Brazilians world champions, Medina, Toledo and Ferreira, vying for the country’s two spots, has switched his allegiance to Italy. 

“My great-grandfather on my father’s side was Calabrian, my mother is also of European origins,” says Mendes, a strikingly unique beauty who is twenty-nine. “It took a while to get a passport but now I’m really happy: I’m a very good friend of Leo Fioravanti and my dream is to go to the 2024 Paris Olympics.” 

To add to the Italians’ surf muscle, another Brazilian, the 2015 world champ Adrian de Souza is the Italian national surf coach. 

“[Adriano] can make this new generation of Italian surfers strong and our nation will have a future in competitive surfing,” says Fioravanti.

Readers will be familiar with Jesse Mendes’ wife, the Kauai-raised Tatiana Weston-Webb who surfed as American on tour but switched to Brazil prior to the Tokyo Games, where she finished ninth.

“Brazil has always been an important part of who I am and, recently, I was approached by the Brazilian Olympic Committee with an opportunity to represent the country in a major way,” she said.

"I really love him. He had a big heart and he never liked to see people cry and I just want to bring him to his home in Hawaii."

Barely had news broke of the Hawaiian surf and skate prodigy Kalani David’s death of a massive seizure while surfing in Costa Rica on September 17 when the family’s troubled core was laid bare. 

Kalani’s daddy David and his wife Andrea set up a crowdfunding account to raise the cash to bring their kid’s remains to Florida, chasing thirty-four k. 

David told me he wanted to get him to Florida so he could be buried next to his beloved grandfather. When he was little, David says, Kalani had nightmares of his body being burned into ashes.

David promised him that’d never happen. 

“I don’t want my son in a jar or spread on the water, as I would see fit for myself. I want to give him a place you can go see him and know he is listening when you share your feelings with him.”

Controversy built when many close to Kalani questioned the GoFundMe account.

Zoë McDougall, North Shore surfer and friend, posted that the GoFundMe was a “scam” and that a private fundraiser would be held.

Anthony Sherman of Ant Boards declared, “It’s a scam by his dad. Do not donate.”

(There is no suggestion by BeachGrit that the GoFundMe sponsored by Kalani’s Dad is anything but legit.)

Now, Kalani’s Costa Rican mother Maureen Barrientos, who was sixteen when she gave birth, and David David are locked in a courtroom battle over the final destination of their son’s remains.

Barrientos says Hawaii; David wants Florida. 

“For me he was everything. My little boy. I reconnected with him when he was 17. I was really happy,” Barrientos told Kitv. “I really love him. He had a big heart and he never liked to see people cry and I just want to bring him to his home in Hawaii.”

Former girlfriend Natalie Keali’inohomoku said, “Everyone knows in this world that Kalani loved the ocean, that’s where I know his heart and soul should rest and be celebrated is back home in Hawaii.” 

Kalani’s sister Rachel Feeney Zamora was in the water when he suffered the fatal seizure. 

 “For everybody he was like a world champion and great surfer, for me he was just my little brother,” she said. “I was right there, I gave him CPR. Like I really tried. I just want to bring him to his home where he belongs. All this family problems we’re having right now we had it before when he was younger so he was always trying to find peace within us.”

Whatever the outcome of the court case, one thing remains, surfing lost one of its wildest talents.

From Kelly Slater,

“Kalani was one of the most talented surfer/skaters ever on earth.”

And from friend and WCT stand-out Seth Moniz,

“He was literally the best surfer and skater of our generation,” WCT stand-out Seth Moniz said. “Not just that but him as like a friend was even better. Like that’s what made him Kalani David. The guy would literally give his shirt off his back to anyone that needed it. Just an incredible human and friend.”

"A life lived well by any measure."

Early reports have it that the Southern California surfer and businessman, Dan Flecky, has passed. A stroke was listed as the cause of death.

Dan Flecky hadn’t surfed much of late, like many of us, and had actually moved to the landlocked state of Missouri a few years ago. His social accounts were mostly full of the country life on the Lake of the Ozarks.

He actually appeared to be very happy.

Let’s talk about some earlier days.

Straight up, when Dan paddled out, during his prime, he fucking ripped.

But, he also kept up a very appropriate underground vibe during those creepy early days of the mid 70’s. He eventually became one of So Cal’s established ‘pros’ and was featured in considerable advertising as well as editorial coverage in the surf rags of the time. His unique 50/50 board color scheme becoming his trademark.

Solid in Hawaii, good sponsors, seamless jump back and forth from HB to Newps (Which he did often and what was not an easy task), he was an early inspiration to many of us groms. In retrospect, Dan almost single-handedly filled the weird gap in Southern California surfing that almost went silent once the Mike Purpus show faded, and then reemerged almost a decade later with the Echo Beach scene and other pockets of progression up and down the coast.

Dan not only made the jump, but was right amongst it with the slightly younger Newport crew that had begun re-imagining surfing during that period.

As one of Peter Schroff’s early muses, Dan helped push Pete’s experimental equipment and should be noted as a key player who bridged surfing from the soul of the early 70’s to something more futuristic well into the 80’s.

As the pro surfer thing began to fade, Dan opened a low-key but important silkscreen business located right at ground zero of the nascent surf industry in Costa Mesa. He was, literally and figuratively, very well positioned as many of his customers were some of the same small start-ups that eventually turned into surfing’s biggest brands. Quik, Billabong, Maui and Sons, and many, many more, all used Dan as an important supply chain partner during this time.

Shortly after, he and his partner Jack Martinez launched the notorious but very successful Black Flys eyewear line. If there was a company having more fun during the early 90’s, I must have missed something.

From Warshaw’s Encyclopaedia of Surfing, 

“(It) soon earned a reputation for its lurid marketing campaigns, including parties of Caligula-like decadence, a promo video called Rat F@#ed, and an ad blitz featuring large-breasted strippers wearing nothing but strategically placed Black Flys stickers. In 1996, the company did $10 million in sales.”

However, as priorities changed, Dan check out to Missouri but was still the same dry, sarcastic, smart-ass we knew him for on his socials. He loved him some Facebook.

We’ll miss you brother, but congrats on a life well lived, by any measure.

Safe travels Dan.