Italo post and pre fall. Photo: WSL
Italo post and pre fall. Photo: WSL

Brazilian champ Italo Ferreira suffers grotesque knee injury at J-Bay though footage quickly disappeared by increasingly Stalinist World Surf League!

"I had to ditch the drums and go straight..."

The second day of the J-Bay Open, men’s division, is currently underway but surf fans, everywhere, have thoughts fixed on the fate of Italo Ferreira. The Brazilian champion was not having the greatest season of his still young life. Early stumbles had him comfortable above the dreaded cut line, as the tour rolled into Margaret River, but nowhere near challenging for a top five slot. A little fire in Lemoore, though, and it seemed like the effervescent muscleman was back.

Alas, average El Salvador and Brazil showings had him in 11th place coming into J-Bay but surf fans, everywhere, held high hopes for a dominant showing in South Africa and a dominant showing in Tahiti.

Ferreira was forced into the elimination round but looking very good against Maui’s Ian Gentil…until, that is, he took a high line to floater to flats and demolished his right knee.

The World Surf League, increasingly Stalinist, quickly scrubbed the closeup footage and mention of injury from on its quick recap vid leading surf fans, everywhere, to wonder if that right knee has been deposited in the same place as former CEO Erik Logan.

Thankfully, the beloved Brazilian has more clout than Logan and took to social media himself, declaring (in translation from his native Portuguese), “I had to ditch the drums and go straight p/ the hospital after making a mistake and injuring my right knee. Unlike last year I was unable to carry on after being in so much pain. I’ve been working hard to be strong and avoid this kind of injury, but unfortunately there is the risk! Hope it’s nothing major and I can go back as soon as possible, just with other plans! Because i cannot achieve my ultimate goal. Everything has a purpose and if it’s meant to be that way, one way or another in the future I’ll figure it out and God will show me the best way. Thank you for the strength.”

Logan sleeps alone.

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Comment live, Corona Open J-Bay, as Kelly Slater fights for life in elimination round!

Can world title contender Jackie Robinson put the GOAT to the sword or will ageless Kelly undulate, again, like belly dancer of old?

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Logan and two of his favourite tour surfers, Jackie Robinson, left, and world champ Filipe Toledo. "Take your shirt off," cheeky Logan says to the Brazilian.

Obituary: In Loving Memory of Erik “Elo” Logan, disappeared by World Surf League, June 29, 2023

In truth, surfing never loved Erik Logan.

Some men are content with their own patch of dirt, watching a few meagre seeds of a lifetime’s hard work flourish around them. Content to live in peace, even if that means being forgotten or unremembered.

Erik “ELo” Logan was not one of these men.

For Erik, no dream was too big.

He’d grown up in a fine neighbourhood in Oklahoma City, where sometimes tornadoes would whip up dust clouds so fierce young Erik’s tears would roll onto his chin like little soft balls. When Erik wasn’t crying, which wasn’t often, he enjoyed dressing his Action Men up in tuxedos with no pants, and pulling the legs from daddy long legs.

Relentlessly driven by the tough love of all the strong women in his life, Logan developed a catty confidence that was to see him have early success in showbusiness. First, as Chuck The Duck, then later, Cody The Coyote, where duties included singing country music songs and sucking golfballs though gardenhoses.

Adopting other identities suited Logan, and he worked his way up the sticky corporate ladder. Soon, dalliances with Oprah Winfrey led to an ego which had become swollen like the bulbous purple head of a little bullfrog, and this, eventually, would lead to his demise.

In January 2020, the mysterious billionaire Dirk Ziff, appointed him as CEO of the World Surf League. Logan stroked out on his own into the shark infested waters of professional surfing with a wetsuit made of armour and some clean, shiny Vans, falling head over heels for surfing.

Here was where he could make his name! Because all the surfers would just be like yeah brah and whatever. What could they possibly know of the clever showbiz tricks and fruity wordplay he would use to control them?

And yes! He could be a surfer! Why not? If Johnny Utah could do it, so could he. He’d be dirty dancing with Swayze lookalikes before he knew it, leading them a merry jig.

His dream was set.

In the early days, Logan could often be seen with his personal Instagram photographer, doggy styling on a SUP. He preferred double Vs to shakas, but was not afraid to use both. The early signs were not promising. The sharks began to circle.

In truth, surfing never loved him. The waters were too muddy, too full of wizened old creatures either entirely disinterested in his presence, or quick to tear him from arsehole to nipple with the ease with which one might draw a paring knife across the skin of a peach.

He changed his look for surfing, adopting a cultivated rugged appearance, like a man with fewer worries. A man who could executive produce mediocre TV shows like Ultimate Surfer and Make Or Break one minute, but wear a t-shirt with the chest tattoos of his star athletes the next. He was not afraid to instruct his athletes to remove their shirts. He was the boss after all.

 

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A post shared by Erik Logan (@elo_eriklogan)

He touched foreheads with Jack Robinson in Hawaii, showing how connected he was to indigenous cultures. He was even thinking of getting himself an outrigger. And he insisted Dave Prodan called him uncle (which he was only too happy to do).

Logan was fond of the passive-aggressive open letter as a medium of communication. He penned two significant letters of pointed prose during his tenure.

The first was a response to a group of surfing professionals who had filed a petition against the Mid Year Cut, a new-old format change for the WCT that saw poorly performing, browbeaten surfers axed halfway through the season. This letter castigated the surfers as if they were silly little children who should be seen and not heard (preferably with tops off).

Letter number two again responded to disgruntled Tour professionals, this time a contingent of World Champions in Filipe Toledo, Gabriel Medina and Italo Ferreira, surfers from a nation whose fanbase might not be Logan’s preferred flavour, being mostly not rich and white, but who have almost single-handedly propped up the World Surf League during his tenure.

Again, this letter had “a tone that lies somewhere between a dictator and a domestic abuser”, according to one chronicler of surfing on minor surf blog, BeachGrit.

Erik Logan did have one bright spot early in his career, the first and only time he would engage with surfing’s gutter press. Logan manhandled BeachGrit’s Charlie Smith in a podcast debate, skipping jauntily around Smith’s ill-prepared questions and aiming sharp little kicks to his ribs in a neat little jig of corporate verbiage. Not since the heady days of Goggans vs Smith had the latter been taken so roughly.

Indeed, Logan’s speciality was to deliver lashings and lashings of mushy corporate word salad. He was particularly adroit at window-dressing bare-faced lies, flubbing numbers, and wielding amorphous statistical evidence, leading many to believe that professional surfing was a runaway success under his watch.

But for a man who valued drama and narrative above all else, he suffered an ungracious, flat ending. No drama, no narrative, Merely disappeared mid-event to the tune of a rudimentary press release. A vaporisation perhaps befitting a man who ran the WSL in a manner not inaccurately compared to Stalinist Russia.

Logan’s Instagram states he is still “living life one wave at a time”.

As an arbiter of surf competition and storytelling, that wave is a closeout in perpetuity.

“No competitive pursuit boasts counter-culture roots cunts as strong as like surfing.” Sydney Morning Herald profile on Logan from March 2023: The Former Oprah Exec Bringing Soap Opera To Surfing

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Slater holding a pair of moon turtle sandals. Photo: KLLY
Slater holding a pair of moon turtle sandals. Photo: KLLY

Surf great Kelly Slater decimates “creativity and innovation expert” with hot-selling moon sandal inspired by turtles!

“For the design of the sandal, Kelly was particularly moved by the mysterious and special relationship between the moon and sea turtle."

Fans, around the world, broke into sobs, yesterday, with the realization that the greatest professional surfer of all-time has, almost certainly, won his last heat. Yes, Kelly Slater will come up against Jack Robinson, whenever J-Bay turns back on, and likely lose. He will then travel to Teahupo’o, a wave he loves very much, but be sitting at the bottom of the draw and lose again. He will not be invited to Lower Trestles, even though the World Surf League loves giving him sneaky wildcards and that will be that.

This morning, though, eyes were dried when the aforementioned fans understood that Slater will continue to dominate, just in other fields.

Let us take design. A “creativity and innovation expert” just posted some life coaching on social media wherein he declared, “This one thing I learned in design school forever changed how I think. I had a course where a professor made us sketch 300 concepts every night. As we hung up our sketches for critique each day, a few things immediately stood out. First, the entire class had similar ideas for the first third of our sketches. Only after that did the interesting ideas start emerging. Second, no matter how amazing you are, your initial ideas are generic and crap.”

He goes on discussing the “flow state” and how to make interesting ideas emerge clearly without realizing that the 11x World Champion had designed a moon sandal inspired by turtles as the very first thing that popped into his head.

Per the press release:

“The first item to hit the market is the sandal, influenced by Slater’s renowned surfing career. Inspired by the relationship between the moon and the ocean, the sandal is made using recycled material, uses BLOOM technology (derived from algae), and provides a high level of cushioning, durability, responsiveness and water resistance.

“For the design of the sandal, Kelly was particularly moved by the mysterious and special relationship between the moon and sea turtle. Turtles have 13 large scales that represent the 13 lunar cycles in each year and 28 smaller scales that represent the days in each cycle. As a tribute to these coexisting forces, Kelly designed the top of the sandal to mirror the moon’s surface while the bottom sole represents the turtle’s scales. Additional styles and sizing are set to release later this year.”

Genius don’t have similar ideas.

Genius likes turtles.

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Israeli inventors design “more stable” e-foil in response to near fatal accident suffered by Rubenesque musical artist DJ Khaled!

Yes I love technology...

It was only one month ago, though it feels like a lifetime, that collective hearts stopped around the world. The beloved plus-sized musical artist DJ Khaled, having a bit of fun in the waters off his Florida home, got the balance wrong on his e-foil and took an extremely nasty spill. The manner in which he tumbled was particularly worrisome, as either the foil or the propeller could have removed his head from his torso. Mercifully, as thoughts and prayers poured in, the damage only required a light massage.

Flash forward and we have two Israeli inventors, Arthur Yanai and Assaf Friedman, debuting Level Hydrofoils. Embedded sensors and algorithms paired with a patented single-mast technology effectively “stabilize” the e-foil experience.

Assaf and I started Level Hydrofoils in 2018 with the premise of bringing to the world the next generation of sustainable watercraft,” Yanai, a veteran of Shayetet 13, the Israel Navy’s sea, air and land (SEAL) unit, told Israel21c. “Both of us are keen water sports enthusiasts. We’ve traveled the oceans and sailed the Atlantic all the way from Israel to the Caribbean. So we are super passionate about this topic.”

How, exactly, does it all work? Yanai declared, “We added a first-of-its-kind gyro stabilizer, making balancing the board automatic. It works so well, it can even fly by itself. We also swapped out the hand control that other e-foils use, for a more intuitive, fly-by-wire weight-based control. It’s the only e-foil that has this function.”

And there we have it.

I’d imagine in the aforementioned hitmaker was on a Level Hydrofoil instead of the extremely dangerous one he was riding, the near fatal accident would have been avoided, DJ Khaled would not have had to been given a massage and the historic heating trend, burning up large swathes of America and Europe, would have been avoided.

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