In bombshell edict, surf company Vans classifies Mark Zuckerberg as “Hawaiian” for purposes of local inclusion in digital Triple Crown series!

Mele Kalikimaka!

As part of the reimagining of the Pipe Masters and the Hawaiian Triple Crown, a three-event series once lauded as the equivalent of the world title, VF Corp’s shoe company Vans set aside forty percent of entries for Hawaiian surfers, with a whopping fifty percent of starters in the Pipe Masters counting as “Hawaiian”.

A watershed moment for North Shore locals, whose island wave-park is swamped by surfers every October through February.

“There’s no shortage of rising talent within the region, but more so it’s about uplifting and respecting the culture and community that’s there today,” Justin Villano, director, brand management (Action Sports) at Vans, told Forbes.

Perfect, yes?

But what makes a Hawaiian surfer?

Because unlike New York or Texas, whose residents can claim to be New Yorkers or Texans wherever they’re from, if you live in Hawaii it ain’t considered right to call yourself Hawaiian unless there’s some Polynesian blood swimming around in your veins.

To wit,

To enter under Hawaiian inclusion rules, must there be a genetic link near or distant, like Koa and Makua Rothman with a Hawaiian mama, Mason and Coco Ho with a Hawaiian great-grand mammy or the Moniz family with proud links to Molokai?

(There’s an estimated 5,000 pure-blood Native Hawaiians left… in the world.)

Or, like the Florence brothers, John John, Nathan and Ivan, all invitees to Pipe, is being born on the rock to mainland American parents, enough?

Yeah, well, someone had to define what Hawaiian meant for the purposes of the rule book and so on and it came down to a simple formula of how long you’ve lived in Hawaii.

And, if you can prove you’re a permanent resident of Hawaii of three years you count as Hawaiian.

Which means that if multi-disciplinary waterman Mark Zuckerberg, a resident of Kauai since 2015, were to enter the digital Triple Crown, and why not, given his meteoric improvement in the waves thanks to on-again-off-again pal Kai Lenny, he might slide in under the Hawaiian edict.

Oprah Winfrey and Pierce Brosnan are also eligible for Hawaiian inclusion, although their entries would seem unlikely.