Our hero. Photo: WSL
Our hero. Photo: WSL

Universally adored champion Carissa Moore stands up to slavish World Surf League corporate bootlicking, refuses to wear Apple Watch while competing!

Chas Smith

By

Hot action!

If I’ve written/uttered it once, I’ve written/uttered it a thousand times. Nobody doesn’t like Carissa Moore. The Olympic gold medalist and multiple-time World Surf League champion surfs with inimitable flare and ain’t afraid to stand up to speak her mind or stake her reputation where her heart is. An especially rare quality in this day and age.

Moore was absolutely robbed of sixth WSL cup last year after the League decided to fix something that wasn’t broken but there was no whine from her. No whimper. And as the 2023 season gets underway at Pipeline, the native Hawaiian is certainly a favorite, Lower Trestles be damned.

Though in case you were looking for yet another reason to don Moore’s number 10 over, say, Morgan Cibilic’s 15, word has leaked out over the coconut wireless that she will not be participating in the World Surf League’s much ballyhooed Apple Watch play. Oh, you’ve certainly read the gushing press releases on how Santa Monica has “adopted” the Apple Watch as the “official wearable,” how professional surfers can utilize realtime priority information in the water, how commentators will say “Apple Watch” at least 130 times per heat.

Well Apple, the corporate behemoth, is not exactly squeaky clean. Controversies from allegations that products are built in Chinese sweatshops to planned obsolescence of those selfsame products clogging landfills to serious issues protecting privacy, there are more than a handful of reasons why a professional surfer would be loathe to strap a li’l computer around wrist and wave that Steve Jobs flag.

Oh, the World Surf League has never met a big business, or industry, that it would not bootlick if given the chance. Bootlick while providing any kind of social or greenwashing asked all slavishly happy.

But, again per coconut buzz, Moore is “not in any way aligned with the Apple corporation” and will not be a pawn.

Boom.

Taking a stand. An especially rare quality in this day and age.

It will be interesting to see how the aforementioned commentators deal with a watch-less Moore in the lineup. Will they be ordered to discuss make-believe metrics anyhow? Refuse to mention her name a la Joel Tudor?

Stay tuned!

Davo and GT light up in Tahiti.

Country Club to face sixteen charges in relation to death of Australian surf star Chris “Doctor Damage” Davidson including “a licensee permitting indecency or violence on licensed premises”

Derek Rielly

By

Davidson's alleged attacker, meanwhile, fronts court on March 9.

Four month ago, the wildly talented Narrabeen shredder Chris Davidson died following an alleged “one-punch assault” outside the grandly named South West Rocks Country Club, five or so hours north of Sydney.

Davidson, who was forty-five, was allegedly knocked unconscious around eleven pm on September 24, treated at the scene by the ambos and taken to Kempsey Hospital but pronounced dead a short time later.

Grant Coleman, the forty-two-year-old brother of the noted rugby union coach Darren Coleman, was arrested thirty minutes after the attack and charged with “assaulting Davidson causing his death.”

Now, following a police investigation the country club itself has been hit with sixteen charges following Davidson’s death including, a licensee permitting indecency or violence on licensed premises, five counts of a licensee failing to comply with conditions of a licence, and 10 counts of a club breaching registered club rules.

Coleman, meanwhile, faces Kempsey Local Court on March 9.

Recent years weren’t so kind to Davo, although let’s be frank, he did burn the candle at both ends, as well as the sides and through the guts.

In 2006, he copped a ten-year driving ban and ten years later, officially back behind the wheel, he crashed his mum’s car into a tree while pissed, cops charging Davo with high-end drink-driving.

A resident who heard the terrific noise, went outside and found Davo slumped in his seat, unmoving. Apart from internal injuries, he suffered severe damage to the ligaments in his neck and would later undergo surgery to his right arm.

If you want to see surfing Davo at his best, watch any of Sonny Miller’s films for Rip Curl or if you want a taste of the man in all his raw glory, watch this.

Interviewer GT asks, “If someone wrote a book about you what would it be called?”

Without hesitation, Davo replies “Doctor Damage and his Tiger Blood!”

Surf world in meltdown as world champs and pivotal industry figures line up to claim a ride by Australian Laura Enever as biggest paddle-in wave by a woman ever, “That’s a new world record WSL!”

Derek Rielly

By

“This is bigger than anything else in surfing including the Billabong Pipe Masters.”

The former women’s world junior champ Laura Enever has, courtesy of a wild sequence from gun photographer Daniel Russo, laid claim to riding the biggest wave ever paddled into by a woman. 

Enever, who is thirty-one and who learned and polished her formidable skills at Sydney’s North Narrabeen, was the second alternate to compete in The Eddie Invitational, which ran on January 22 and was won by the on-duty North Shore lifeguard Luke Shepardson.

She didn’t get to write a little history at that event but just south of the action at Waimea Bay, Enever paddled out to the same lefthander where the late Sion Milosky rode the biggest men’s paddle wave back in 2010. 

Enever ain’t one to toot her own horn, as they say, and her accompanying caption gives little away as to the immensity, and historical nature, of the wave. 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by LAURA ENEVER (@lauraenever)

“Dropping in then looking back up at this beauty/ mountain is something I won’t forget 😱 everything was in slow mo 🤣I’m so in awe of the ocean, mother nature & these powerful islands I didn’t think anyone shot the whole wave so it was special to see 🙂 excited to get more comfortable on my big boards to try take some different lines next time :)”

A who’s who of the surfing world, including iconic big-wave surfers Shane Dorian and Grant “Twiggy” Baker and world champ Italo Ferreira, lined up to heap praise, with Twiggy writing simply.

“That’s a new world record WSL.”

Photographer Russo told BeachGrit, “it was the biggest day of waves since Sion caught his. A picturesque setting, clean winds, blue ski. I saw waves that were as big or bigger than Sion’s.”

For comparison, the current holder of the biggest paddle wave by a gal is Andrea Moller, for a “42-footer” at Jaws in 2016. 

(Swing by the Guinness site here.)

Andrea Moller’s Guinness World Record wave from 2016.

I think Laura’s wave a little bigger, no?

And, you’ll remember Laura climbing up the beach a few days ago from Koa Smith’s POV excursion to the joint shortly after the historic ride.

“I got one,” she says modestly.

Photo: Catch me if you can.
Photo: Catch me if you can.

In stunning rebuke, left-leaning international newspaper questions veracity of World Surf League final’s day viewership numbers!

Chas Smith

By

The George Santos of sport.

These days are absolutely chockablock with untruths and misrepresentations all across the various spectrums. Fake bodies on social media, fake politicians elected to public office, maybe fake viewership numbers for the World Surf League’s Final’s Day there on Lower Trestles’ cobbled stone.

In the moments following Filipe Toledo’s historic win, WSL CEO took to various luncheons to proclaim it the “most watched day in surfing history.” Seven-million some viewers and counting.

At the time, leading correspondent J.P. Currie became extremely, and rightly, indignant, penning:

Are you really telling us, Mr Erik Logan, that the WSL Finals were more popular than last year’s NBA conference finals, watched by an average of 7 million viewers (East) and 6.7 million (West)?

The 2022 Champions’ League Final between Liverpool and Real Madrid averaged just 2.76 million viewers in the US. Granted, soccer is still a growing sport in North America, but it’s significantly more popular than surfing.

Plain and simple: the WSL’s numbers are ludicrous. It’s a campaign of such deliberate misinformation and manipulation of statistics that it amounts to sheer lies.

The quest for data is a goldrush. It’s the mark of Erik Logan’s media savvy, if you could call it that. Whilst new for surfing, it’s hardly an original tactic. In fact, internet culture is predicated on it.

Well, left-leaning newspaper The Guardian directly challenged Santa Monica in a piece exploring the rising use of technology in professional surfing. After describing how the season used to end at Pipeline, a “fearsome wave of consequence fitting arena for the world’s best,” as opposed to Filipe Toledo and Lower Trestles, before pivoting to declare:

Although it is early to gauge a Make or Break effect, the early signs are promising. Last year’s WSL finals, won by Australia’s Stephanie Gilmore and Brazilian Filipe Toledo respectively, was reportedly the most-watched surfing competition in history, with a reported 8.3 million views across WSL digital channels. Not everyone is so positive, though, and the veracity of WSL’s numbers has been questioned.

Veracity questioned.

Hammer.

At time of writing, the World Surf League has yet to respond but do you think the crisis team is on it? Mr. Logan setting up another conference in which to spin and weave?

Make or break.

Photo: Instagram
Photo: Instagram

World Surf League CEO Erik Logan delights cultural anthropologists, concerns anti-doping watchdogs ahead of Pro Pipeline by adopting traditional Hawaiian greeting!

Chas Smith

By

An illegal advantage?

The Billabong Pro Pipeline is entering its second official day and while Surfline has upgraded its swell forecast, the wind remains “tricky.” This probable continued pause in action allows us, though, to contemplate other great surf mysteries. Like, for example, how do you greet your fellow wave slider when you see her or him in the wild?

A nod followed by slick “What’s up?”

Shaka and “Hey, bro?”

Firm handshake with no verbal tick?

Firm handshake followed by pull in to side hug then an earnest “How’s the family?”

Well, World Surf League CEO Erik Logan has, on Oahu’s North Shore for the contest, has delighted cultural anthropologists by adopting the traditional Hawaiian greeting of “sharing breath” (see above photo).

Per Hawaii Aloha:

“This exchange of breath, or ha, is done when two people press together the bridge of their noses while inhaling at the same time. It’s a Hawaiian greeting that welcomes the other person into their space by sharing the breath of life, which was sacred to the culture. Ancient Hawaiians recognized that their breath was the key to good health and believed it possessed mana (spiritual power). Before an elderly person died, he/she often passed down wisdom to the chosen successor by sharing ha in this fashion.”

As you can see, Logan, who hails from Oklahoma, is passing his Big Kahuna mana to Australian’s Jack Robinson, who is certainly harboring dreams of a maiden Championship Tour victory. But how do you think it will go? Will surf fans look back on this moment, this Pro Pipeline kickoff and breath sharing, as the launching pad to Robinson’s epic year? An illegal advantage like steroids? Did all competitors receive Logan’s mana?

And while cultural anthropologists may be delighted by the moment, do native Hawaiians feel the same?

Anti-doping watchdogs?

Currently more questions than answers.

Photo: Steve Sherman/@tsherms
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