Tears for the Big O last year after being cut from the tour. | Photo: Make or Break, Apple +
Fairytale turns sour as surf Olympian swindled of fortune by crooked bookkeeper and controversially cut from world tour despite grave brain injury sensationally quits pro surfing!
Owen gets a wildcard from his sponno Rip Curl for Bells, then he’s out.
Do you believe in fairytales? We do!
Our naivety, if you could call it that, was proved true six years ago when Owen Wright, who doctors said would never walk again, let alone surf, after a catastrophic brain injury following a wipeout at Pipeline in 2015, won the Snapper Pro two years after the devastating accident.
But, yeah, fairytales also turn sour.
The one-time world title contender who was dumped from the 2023 tour after missing the mid-year cut last year, has formally announced his retirement from competition citing a fear of lighting up the old brain injury.
“After my traumatic brain injury in 2015, my desire to prove to myself and the world that I could still be great and overcome this life-threatening incident inspired my recovery,” the thirty three year old said in a WSL statement. “Given my recent history with head injuries and concussions, competing at some of the heaviest waves on the planet is no longer in the best interest of my long-term health.I excelled in these conditions over my career, but the risks associated with this type of surfing are too significant for someone in my position, given my medical history.”
He ain’t totally shelving his boards, however.
“I hope to keep surfing for the rest of my life,” he said. “I love surfing and thank the sport for everything I have.”
Owen gets a wildcard from his sponno Rip Curl for Bells, then he’s out.
If you’re worried O ain’t got a pot to piss in, as they say here in the Antipodes, fear not.
Despite the plume of golden hair, swooning eyes and bullfighter’s body that once whipped women into a froth, O is a real estate developer of considerable note.
Australian surf royalty Chris Hemsworth publicly executed for violent birthday attack on young son: “In my country this is done but very poorly looked upon because several accidents have already happened.”
Are we there yet? Peak Nanny Culture? Nothing to do but just sit atop the humungous mound of worry, victimization, lost sense of humor, nitpick and warm ourselves in the hot beam of disapproval? To be honest, I’d thought we’d arrived at the tippy-top six months ago when a certain tasteless surf tabloid was slammed by the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing for posting an image of an old gal having the best of times.
We were not even close.
For hours ago, surf royalty Chris Hemsworth and his wife, Elsa Patasky, were sent to the stocks for putting their son’s face in a chocolate cake and posting it to social media.
Happy 9th birthday to my two little men! Only one way to eat cake in this house and that’s to have mum slam your head into it face first!! “Hey mum I don’t like chocolate cake I prefer vanilla” “oh really son, what about now”?
“Why people smash their kid’s face in the cake is above my understanding but whatever,” one concerned global citizen, who is clearly childless, wrote.
“Why do people think this is funny?” another lobbed, before a third added, “It’s so violent.”
“In my country this is done, but it’s very poorly looked upon because several accidents have already happened,” a fourth opined.
Please gather at the less famous Hemsworth’s house with torches already lit.
See you there.
(If you don’t know the address, DM Derek Rielly.)
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Heartbreak. Photo: WSL
Surf fans finally give up all hope for fairytale reunion as Kelly Slater’s one-time love Gisele Bündchen rumored to be dating trust fund billionaire famous for string of supermodel exes!
Kelly Slater is many things. An 11x champion, 4x ringer of Bells, 2x Oahu homeowner (that I know of) and I don’t doubt that he has done quite well for himself, financially. The old Association of Surfing Professionals used to list career earnings, though that tradition has been disappeared since the World Surf League has refused to raise pay, but a quick search declares he has won over $4 million, which does not count many millions more in endorsement deals.
Certainly a double-digit millionaire.
Paltry and sad compared to one Jeff Soffer.
Rumors are burning hot that the son of an important Florida property developer, who inherited billions, is currently in an amorous relationship with Slater’s one-time love Gisele Bündchen.
You will certainly recall, months ago, when the Brazilian supermodel and her then-husband Tom Brady announced their shock split after a decade-plus of marriage. While surf fans mourned the breakup, they also busily lit candles, hoping beyond hope that Bünchen would find her way back to Slater and the world would be right.
Alas, things have not gone as desired.
Bündchen was first linked to her dashing jiu-jitsu instructor and now to Soffer, who was once married to Elle Macpherson and has a reputation for dating supermodels.
And is this where the fairytale bubble pops?
Is this where they all pop?
Princess falls in love with woodcutter before ending up with loaded prince thanks to rich king daddy?
Shoot.
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Chief of Sport Jessi Miley-Dyer (insert) explaining why she hates Hawaii. Photo: WSL
World Surf League further degrades Hawaii, knocks “first jewel of Triple Crown” Haleiwa off the Challenger Series!
Surfing’s Triple Crown, which took place in November – December, was once a grand and glorious test of skill and will. Kicking off at Haleiwa before moving to Sunset and ending at Pipeline, the series was as oft as thrilling as the entirety of the Championship Tour. Alas what the World Surf League has wrought.
Long bent on degrading the Hawaiian islands, the Santa Monica-based governing body has allowed the Triple Crown to be turned into a TikTok contest, given away the prestigious Pipeline Masters, moved the season’s ender from Oahu’s North Shore to Southern California’s Lower Trestles, cancelled Maui’s Honolua Bay, introduced Covid and has now downgraded the aforementioned first jewel from Challenger Series event to the Qualifying Series.
World Surf League Chief of Sport Jessi Miley-Dyer defended the action in a wide-ranging interview with artificially flavored outdoor website The Inertia, declaring the intended slap was meant to help Hawaii “The main piece of feedback I’ve received from the surfers is around making the whole qualification pathway really strong – including at the regional level. It’s important to us that we also ensure (the surfers from the Hawaii/Tahiti Nui region) have a strong regional pathway and some really good opportunities to compete on the championship tour.”
There was more talk on the “product” of surfing and “synergies” etc. along with a refutation that Haleiwa has been vulgarized due Vans pulling out as sponsor.
“I can’t speak to what has been reported on (some other) website, but we’ve had great partners and continue to do so for 2023.”
Surfing on the new-look Challenger and Qualifying series can be buoyed by the fact that their numbers have been slashed, there are less events and the finals will take place in Brazil.
Product and synergy.
The wave of the future.
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Big tanned cock.
Filmmaker behind groundbreaking new surf film starring Luke Hemsworth reveals wild new details including “the bag of dicks” he used to identify the movie’s star-studded cast!
To know Nick Pollet is, at the very least, to love him and his comedic collaborations with Swellian Lord Adam “Vaughan” Blakey who, when his hind legs aren’t quivering and he isn’t easing his crimson dingus out, is a man who straddles the fine line between positive noise and toxic slime.
In a couple of weeks, the pair will launch, via an Australia-wide tour that coincides with two of the pro contests here, their latest film, The Greatest Surf Movie in the Universe, a stop-motion epic three years in the making.
On the blustery and, let’s be frank, sadly autumnal Tuesday when I call Byron Bay-based Nick, he’s a few hours from a trip to Australia’s Great White-infested southern flank with Mick Fanning, Gabriel Medina and Mason Ho.
“I’ll swim and shoot but, fuck, real close to the other photographers,” he says.
The inspiration came from Team America, made by South Park wizards Trey Parker and Matt Stone, as well as the all-time surf-comedy classic from 2003, Vaughan’s Doped Youth.
Nick approached Vaughan years back but he didn’t sound too keen” which ain’t surprising, stop-motion is hit or miss and so labour intensive even a Bangladeshi kid would turn his nose up at the return on investment.
When a gap in his work schedule presented itself in 2020, Nick decided, well, ain’t no time like the present.
“I hit up all the surfers, got some dolls made of ‘em, started playing around and working out how I was going to do it, learned stop-motion animation and then, ‘cause we were working together on a Rip Curl project, asked Vaughan to write the script.”
The idea for the dolls came from Mick Fanning’s retirement dinner when each guest was gifted a bobble-headed Mick.
“It was on my desk and I was tinkering around and I ripped the head off it, grabbed a Superman doll from my kid, ripped the head off that and put Mick’s head on it. Then I started mucking around with a green screen.”
For three hundred dollars each, and after much to and froing with a factory in China, Nick had reasonable facsimiles of the cast, including the WSL commentators Ronnie Blakey, who is also Vaughan’s brother, and Joe Turpel, and surfers Mick Fanning, Mason Ho, Griffin Colapinto, Jack Freestone, Matt Wilkinson and Craig Anderson.
Vaughan, above, and Nick, as dolls and, below, in real life!
“They all came with a bag of dicks and that’s the reason there’s so many dicks in the movie,” says Nick, revealing a crucial plot line.
Dicks galore!Jack Freestone, tiny cock, and Matt Wilko, jackhammer.His mammy made the outfits for the tiny creatures, which saved the production a significant amount.
“Mum did it for free. Doll clothes are so expensive,” he says.
After talks with production company Bronte Pictures, who suggested he make it as a feature film and not a thirty-minute featurette, Nick got himself a little cash to pay Vaughan for the script, as well as of the use of the colour grader who did Elvis and the the sound engineer from Mad Max.
The premise for the film is beautiful: It is ten years in the future and a virus has hit and John Fig, played by Vaughan, has made a vaccine to save everyone but the vax wipes out everyone’s memory of surfing.
“Mick’s a yogi meditation guru bogan. Griff is a hyped-up guy stuck in the desert who hasn’t seen anyone in years, Wilko is a cowboy, Ando is a ninja, Mason is a volcano tour guide in Hawaii and Jack’s trying to be a rock star but he’s real bad.”
Tour dates in Australia re, roughly, April 3, Bells, Perth, April 18, Margs, April 19, Sydney, sometime around the end of May, Gold Coast, May 3, Byron, May 4.
And, how did he get Luke Hemsworth, a man described yesterday as an “honest lover and a brave bull” involved in the venture?
Nick says he’d been filming Mick, along with Luke and his little brothers Chris and Liam and they were having a post-surf beer when he showed Luke an early version of his stop motion work.
“You should get dolls made of us,” Luke said.
“When we finished the animation I got his number off Mick and asked him to narrate it,” says Nick. “He was keen. He’s such a legend he didn’t hesitate. “
