All quiet on the southern front.
Let us be all the way honest. The surf, yesterday, around the corner from Bells Beach was terrible. Like, baby yuck yucks. I was with you, computer open, anticipating the start of final’s day though when World Surf League Chief of Sport Jessi Miley-Dyer, festooned in a yellow anorak, said it was on and “contestable.” Ronald Blakey and Richard Lovett, in the booth, said they were excited to see the performances. That it was “chicken skin” inducing.
All displaying a shared insanity.
There are certainly other things that could have been said. Things like, “Look, we have eyes and we see how bad these waves are but let’s see what the surfers can make out of them.”
But no.
Goose bumps.
In any case, Ethan Ewing won, etching his name alongside his late dear mother’s who won exactly 40 years earlier. The surf press, rightly, loved the story and spilled much ink.
Inspirational etc.
C’est la fin.
Except.
Did you know there was a women’s contest running concurrently with the men’s?
It is true and won by Tyler Wright, her second Bell in a row, moving through a murderers’ row of Stephanie Gilmore, Carissa Moore and Molly Picklum to avenge her decapitated brother Owen Wright.
“I didn’t expect too much this week … last year there was so much emotion in it as it took me 12 years to try and get the first one,” she told Australia’s ABC news, who tacked the quip onto the end of a story about Ethan Ewing. “Both wins are incredible,” she added “and I felt I learnt a lot from last year on how to manage Bells.”
Wright is now second in the world, nipping at Picklum’s heels heading into Margaret River.
Mallard pimples.
Relive the magic along with 1700 others now.
