Heat of the year!

A few days back all hell broke loose when a pretty girl claimed she was monstered by a jacked gym-stud while filming a few cutsie workout routines at her local health club.

Jessica Fernandez, who identifies as Colombian and Nicaraguan and lives in Southern California, has a real healthy 56k followers on Twitch and 10k YouTube subscribers.

A video where she says a lifter stared at her “like a piece of meat” was viewed three million times.

“This guy kept making me extremely uncomfortable at the gym,” she wrote. “This is why I’ll end up crying on stream. I feel so grossed out at times with the amount of sexualisation I experience. Hopefully this spreads awareness for girls who experience this type of treatment at the gym.”

Given the buildup, the video was a real non-event. Lifter looks over a few times and, a little later, offers to help put the weights back on the bar.

Still, Fernandez said the guy “triggered my flight or fight and response to previous traumas… I was completely fine until he followed me to my squat rack in the corner of the gym…I can see how this makes me look like I have an inflated ego but I am an attractive girl in a beauty standard sense and I get extremely sexually harassed online and it makes trusting random strangers that approach me trigger my trauma which is why I respond this way.”

While fans were quick to back her up (“I don’t understand how hard it is to mind your business, people aren’t at the gym to get stared at or get hit on makes no sense”) majority opinion swung towards the demonised man.

“Girls like this go to the gym just to chase clout and be toxic. This man did nothing wrong. And she’s hiding comments calling her out. REALLY weak for someone who hits the gym,” wrote another gal.

“I watched the whole video. The guy glances over a few times, probably wondering why she’s recording herself,” wrote right-wing Daily Wire host Matt Walsh. “Then he comes over and offers to help her rack the weights. She declines, he says, ‘Oh OK’, and walks away. The end. She’s the problem here, not him.”

Women are harassed in gyms and it needs to stop, but you are not one of them. An act of kindness or a glance does not make you a victim. pic.twitter.com/34g9265KXb

— Joey Swoll (@TheJoeySwoll) January 21, 2023

Fernandez, realising the implications of publicly throwing a man under a social media bus, eventually, and with haunted eye penance, apologised.

“I will be coming out with a response to this whole gym situation in a few days. I’m sorry,” wrote Fernandez.

Whereupon Kelly Slater, a man whose Twitter profile warns “I make fun of things, point out absurdities, and tackle serious subjects like the cutback”, delivered the stunning coup de grâce, that famously cool, logical voice wrapped around a heady sense of masculine superiority.

“In a few days? You checking with your lawyers and publicist? Just apologize to the guy in person.”

Touché etc.

What kind of value could you put on an event like that? Millions? Billions?

I’m not sure how your memory is hanging on, but I had to shuffle through a few old files and bing/yahoo a few old stories to be reminded of what is probs the biggest failure in sports marketing history. 

To wit, Quiksilver losing the naming rights to what is now The Eddie Invitational but used to be The Quiksilver: In Memory of Eddie Aikau. 

What you may not know is The Eddie Invitational, sponsored by Quiksilver, didn’t start off as a big-wave contest.

The first event was held in six-to-eight-foot waves at Sunset Beach back in 1984, and only went big wave when Quiksilver execs along with Fast Eddie Rothman turned it into the speciality event we all know, love etc, at Waimea Bay. 

When the fifty-k prize money was announced, it also became the richest surf contest in the world. 

In 2016, it felt like the event couldn’t get any better when John John Florence, the just-crowned world surfing champion, cemented his claim to best in biz when he won the still-sponsored-by-Quiksilver, although barely, Eddie in wild 25-foot conditions. 

What kind of value could you put on an event like that?

Millions?

So how did such a fruitful relationship, which included the lucrative sale of Eddie Aikau-Quiksilver merchandise, wind up in the gravel, pecking for worms?

Here’s the background: the previous ten-year contract was expiring in the spring of 2016 and Quiksilver and the Aikau family began negotiating a new deal. 

The Aikau family were advised that a potentially better deal might be out there if they shopped it around a little. Red Bull was in the mix, initially, but apparently, Red Bull and the WSL couldn’t couldn’t find a way to play nice so they pulled out at the last minute, leaving the Aikaus with no deal.

A source told BeachGrit multiple offers were submitted to the Aikaus by Quiksilver, all with increased revenue sharing opportunities but all were rejected. 

But here’s the thing.

Quiksilver owned the permits for the 2015-16 contest and even canvassed the idea of calling it a different name to circumvent the need to involve the famous Hawaiian family. 

Quiksilver played around with The Quiksilver: In Memory of Jose Angel, The Quiksilver: In Memory of Todd Chesser, The Quiksilver: In Memory of Brock Little.

Anyway, it worked out for 2016 but was terminated shortly after.

Did Quiksilver decide that the chances of The Eddie ever being as good as 2016 were so slim any subsequent money poured into it would be wasted?

The question I asked at the time was, would you, if gifted the keys to the clothing giant that was once famously six hundred million dollars in debt, continue to run with The Eddie?

Or would you pour the surplus money into your number one team rider Matt Banting?

Quiksilver chose Banting.

Regrets, y’think?