Meanwhile, world champ Toledo walks around San Clemente thrusting his jaw out like a tanned Mussolini.

The Australian world number three Ethan Ewing, a man with two busted vertebrate from a Teahupoo wipeout a couple weeks back and a talent so infernal Brazilians want to kill him, is reportedly training like hell in the gymnasium to snatch an unlikely world title at Lowers in September.

The baby-faced twenty four year old with an ass both women and men describe as “overwhelming” has surfed six times since the injury and is busy preparing his quiver of Darren Handley surfboards for the one-day surf-off that’ll run some time between September eight and sixteen at San Clemente’s Lower Trestles.

 

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The favourite to win the contest is the small-wave wizard and reigning world champion Filipe Toledo, who is fully aware of the glory that surrounds him and who walks around San Clemente thrusting his jaw out like a tanned Mussolini.

Not everyone is a fan of his reign, howevs.

From last year’s report by JP Currie,

Toledo’s maiden title was a predictable outcome you’d have been foolish to bet against. Luckily I didn’t in the end.

Do you accept the brittle Brazilian as your champion? His skills are not in doubt, of course. In certain conditions he’s unparalleled. His technical mastery of a surfboard is second to none.

His commitment is not so certain.

Call me old-fashioned, but I feel that our world champion should be a surfer we believe has the capacity to win at any stop on Tour. Filipe Toledo is not that surfer, and yet here we are.

I’ve no wish to belabour this point. Toledo’s history and sub-par performances at some of the world’s most iconic waves are well documented by now, to the point that it’s become trite to point it out. If he hasn’t progressed, that’s on him.

The title may not be served to Toledo on an d’oeuvres platter as per last year, as judges continue to shift from rewarding frenetic but unpretty airs to melting over smooth, highly technical combos, the domain of Colapinto and Ewing.

And Ewing, whose smile grows cold when talk turns to Medina taking his spot at Lowers despite the WSL hosing down the suggestion and Medina himself treating his troupe of handsome guy-pals to a lavish Bora Bora vacay, is reportedly at eighty percent fitness.

He is, also, extremely keen to mop up the blood from last year.

Again, from JP Currie,

Trestles was always going to be a venue that punished Ethan and Jack, two men raised on a steady diet of real waves. Their surfing has been honed by power and consequence. To see them stunted by Californian dribble fizzling over cobblestones felt a bit like trapping their nature, squeezing it into some environment in which it didn’t belong.

Ewing was an albatross in an aviary, wings clipped and saddened. To see him force his back foot through turns on weak sections was not only demoralising but borderline offensive.

Getting excited? Are you ready yet to admit the disappeared CEO created a classic?

"Getting the nose of my board in the left side of my chest leaving me with a gaping hole for the rest of the trip."

The last time Soli Bailey came onto my radar, or at least my night thoughts, was several years ago when a commission came in from a Chinese magazine to write a piece about surfing, with Soli as its centrepiece. 

Although I won’t reprint it here, it is the most overblown story I’ve ever written, and that’s saying something, as you know. 

An excerpt. 

“It’s men like Soli who hold the new surfing, which is neither dangerous nor paltry, neither exclusive nor overblown, in his palm, watching the light, the eternal light of a gift from the gods, dance over his fingertips.” 

The editor, a handsome homosexual in his early thirties, asked me out, hardly surprising given the flowery words I’d submitted, and spoke in graphic terms of what he would do to the Byron Bay maestro and Pipeline Pro winner if he was given carte blanche. 

Anyway.

Bailey was in Indonesia recently and in between riding six-foot Green Bush almost severed his hirsute areola following a wipeout.

“Rolllercoaster of a trip recently…couple of crazy freight trains on day two which led to a unlucky injury, getting the nose of my board in the left side of my chest leaving me with a gaping hole for the rest of the trip but the last day was too good not to get amongst it!”

Many quips in the comments, “off your tits”, “serious nipple rash”, “free the nip” and so on.

Thoughts and prayers as the Americans say.

 

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"His foot ripped off and basically he was bleeding everywhere."

A surfer in his forties is fighting for his life this afternoon after being hit by a suspected Great White shark at Port Macquarie, a holiday hamlet four hours north of Sydney and birthplace of the great Mick Campbell, the one-time tour contender. 

The man, who is forty-four, was hit at ten am, and suffered upper and lower leg injuries. He was transported to Port Mac hozzy for emergency surgery. 

As the surfers in the lineup paddled for shore, the shark tried to attack for a second time dispelling that hoary old myth that shark bites are a mistake.

A teenage girl who saw the attack described it as “really, really scary. I have never seen anything like it,” she told NBN. “His foot ripped off and basically he was bleeding everywhere. They were trying to talk to him, he was silent, he was frozen. They tried to tie his leg with the leg rope from the surfboard and some sticks to keep it straight.”

Attacks by Great Whites aren’t exactly rare around Port. Three years ago, thirty-five-year-old surfer Chantelle Doyle was pulled from the jaws of a ten-foot Great White by her insanely brave husband Mark Rapley. 

“The shark was latched on to her leg. I just jumped into the water. I did what anyone would have done in that moment,” said Rapley, forgetting, perhaps, most of us are cowards in the line of fire and would’ve fled without a backward glance, soul mate or not.  

Witness Jed Toohey described the scene.

“It was unbelievable, the scream was incredible and there was splashing everywhere. Mark, her partner, got her up on the board. Mark was a hero. He started laying into the shark because it wouldn’t let go. He saved her life. He got off his board and started punching the shark. If he hadn’t put his own life at risk, it would have been strong enough to take her out to sea.”

That year, 2020, was a wild one for Great White attacks in the area: fifteen-year-old Mani Hart-Deville at Wooli, two hours north of Port and sixty-year-old Rob Pedretti at Kingscliff, another couple of hours north.

Beaches closed etc.

More as it comes.