Most prestigious surf contest on earth.
There is no chance you did not catch the Eddie Aikau big wave invitational today. Not one. From false start, one week ago, until the prediction of monster-swell-come-true as the morning sun rose over Waimea Bay, you were here. Or maybe there, hugging the volcanic cliff, breath caught in throat.
But.
If a three-year-old’s birthday party or long-planned garden work or boozy mini-golf somehow, divisional play in the National Football League accidentally, snuck up then… well, I won’t be the one to throw the first stone.
I was too busy, in fact, to even find a good throwin’ stone as I was glued to computer then phone then computer watching each and every moment of this historic history.
Wow.
The Eddie proved its worth as the most prestigious surf contest on earth. The mix of terror, art, skill, old-school charging was worth its weight and it made all the sense in the world that viewer numbers smashed any World Surf League event where
Today was an absolute who’s who of elder statesmen including Ross Clarke-Jones, Peter Mel, Michael Ho, Kelly Slater plus a good helping of North Shore chargers, sprinkled with Maui boys and the odd Chilean and we will have days to pick over their best moments though, now, in this moment, we have a man the judges refused to name all day long.
No leaderboard, very little understanding of which jersey represented what surfer.
While Kaipo and Rocky formed an epic duo, out-lilting each other at every turn, the lack of public-facing points, general understanding on who was wearing what color etc. did throw the idea of live commentators into question.
No matter.
As Mark Healy said, “best big day of Waimea I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Billy Kemper, “Best day in surfing history.
And North Shore lifeguard Luke Shepardson beats John John Florence to take it.
A perfect Cinderella ending to a monster one.
More later.
Ross CJ hadn’t surfed any big waves the last 5 years after a bad injury, and wasn’t wearing any flotation. What a dude.
shit bad info from a friend of mine……amazing when you think RCJ has not surfed a wave over 6′ in 5 years has come back from 3 years of trying to get his ankle right ( never 100%) , then just paddles out at the bay and starts like he’s never been missing!!!
at the end of the event, said as much as a comment and it got axed. now i know how you felt!
gonna get this off my breast. the production was straight up shitty, as was the announcing…without the BG comments I would assume that the event was a giant hallucination…flash cam pointed west the ocean was a washing machine, overhead drone shots showed glass…main cam had tunnel vision, shore cams pointed in every direction and missed rides, crowd shots on the beach also interupted rides…there was no connection between who’s riding; pure speculation and confusion, excessive praise for manuevers not seen and incessant boasting about event history (see Gil’s entry below); commercials for locals that the rest of the world could care less about…75k watchers that were glued for no other reason than to see trainwreck wipeouts and missed ’em…camera production and editting were flashes that were disorienting…now back to the Bger’s…the thread was purely linear and followed up on lapses of content with witty, comical, twitter adjacent (surfAd’s? post of nate f’s iphone shot from the beach of RCJ on the biggest wave and closing out was the best panoramic view of the entire 8+ hour event).
that said…thx Chas for hosting and thanks derelicts for keeping it real, classy, and informative…from the moment it started I was was itching to go full stoner, but typing and keeping up with the convo held my interest, long time, big time…as a result, i didn’t start the office party until the last heat and by the time the awards ceremony began I was comfortably numb and dumb…and drained. some would say “yeah, I was surfed out.” congrats and mahalo to those of us that could watch remotely and arm chair q-back it. A SHARED, SACRET, experience…we are all expierenced now!
yeah Way! I’m staring at an epic pic…
Not to mention all the couch surfing he has been doing over there.
I went to one of our local Mexican grocery stores last week to pick up tortillas and eggs cause TJ’s was out per usual and I don’t like there tortillas. They had two options for eggs with no pricing like an Iranian liquor store. I was like fuck it I am going with the higher end cage free ones. It couldn’t be too much in this joint. $8.99 it cost me!!!
Doesn’t everyone in Hawaii own chickens? therefore eggs cost… chicken feed. What’s the inflation on chicken feed?
Special remake of Tom Petty’s “Free-fallin”… Order Now!!
Maybe JJ can make Luke an egg sandwich every morning for a year and leave it on his back steps and Luke can swoop it up on the 4-wheeler as he patrols the shore…
Eggie Aikau
Holy shit
CORRECT!
Serious question for the more seasoned BG commentariat. How does today rate in the annals of Waimea? IMO, today is the best I’ve seen.
*lol autocorrect
Yeah, better than 2016 f’sure
… I’m not convinced re: 2016. I remember those close out sets in 2016 and people routinely sending it on ridiculous waves where they had no chance of things ending well. Just seemed like a much less orderly, totally out of control Waimea than yesterday. We’re talking a few years of brain cell deterioration since…cleaner at a similar size, I guess. Sense of the surfers being on the brink of being swept to Japan and never seen again?? Not as much. But who knows, memory is a tricky bitch.
1990 was the year.
No life preserver, padding or jet skis.
Brock on a single fin with no leash.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
I must admit, moment I woke I immediately went searching for the live feed.
You can have a contest every month and the championship at trestles end of every year but Eddie is the event that counts.
Was ok but prefer seeing Gmed dominate big Pipe.
Guy deserved the win
Styled it and got the good ones
“You can’t script this”
Are Europeans allowed to name their children with Hawaiian names?
Dude freaking nailed it , those three waves where legit mountains and he got into the most perfect take-off zones and rode them with style and so good it’s now simply the Eddie and fuck the sponsors naming rights Eddie I think would have approved .
** Plus, he’s a fellow NS Lifeguard!** … too fucking cool really! Congratulations Luke!
totally agree…would have been a crime if he didn’t win.
10k first prize seemed out of place with the magnitude of that event.
I know it’s not about the money, but the lifeguard should have 100k in his backpocket.
I wonder if that Surfline videoman got his ass whooped for popping off?