Jaw dropping!
And here we are at the tail end of 2022. But how did the year treat you? Full of surprises? Wonderful little gifts? Or was it one nasty blow after another? I certainly hope for the former but if the latter was your bag then don’t fret. 2023 will certainly be better but also you can etch your name alongside those who suffered through the most explosive controversies in surf.
Oh but what were they? In order from least to most incendiary.
5) In early October, or thereabouts, the World Surf League released its next year Championship Tour schedule. Gone were Padang Padang and quality. Re-introduced, Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch. The most unpopular surf contest on earth. Surf fans, and professionals surfers, growing furious with its continued malingering. Wondering what sort of nefariousness is being made in the World Surf League’s Santa Monica offices.
4) One month earlier, sitting longboard champion became spanked on the buttocks at his home break of Cardiff Reef, California by a SUP pilot. A very public spanking.
3) Respected surf voice JP Currie declared that Kelly Slater is not, in fact, the greatest athlete of all-time, writing,”At the highest level of sport, the kind of level reserved for people dubbed GOATs, sport influences culture, brings people hope, and instigates change. Kelly Slater isn’t even close to being the GOAT, and I’d bet, in the cold light of day or the throes of an ayahuasca-led vision quest in Costa Rica, he might just admit that, too.”
2) Rip Curl, home to brave Tyler Wright, sponsored a butt n boobs sexy contest in Jacksonville, Florida. Girls only but no surfing. Just butts n boobs.
1) Eventual World Champion Filipe Toledo reprised his brave act of cowardice and refused to paddle for a wave during a heat with Kelly Slater and Nathan Hedge, preferring to bob out the back and let two elderly gentlemen swap perfection.
And there we have it. All in all a fairly tame 350-something days.
Unless I totally forgot something.