"There can be only one 'world's heaviest wave', and that title rests soundly with the wave at Teahupo'o (don't make saying it more difficult than it need be; it's pronounced Cho-poo)."
The World Surf League, and its ever diminishing stable of surfers, is headed toward the final stop of the season, rendered largely irrelevant by the much ballyhooed, increasingly dumb “final’s day” at a soft wave breaking over cobbled stone.
Teahupo’o.
The end of the road.
Yes, former CEO Erik Logan destroyed much during his nearly five year reign, including his own marriage and life, but the Championship Tour (formerly known as the Dream Tour) has suffered the brunt of his horny idiocy.
It doesn’t matter what happens at the heavy left, one responsible for breaking the back of Australia’s great hope Ethan Ewing. For the “big showdown” at Lower Trestles is set.
Filipe Toledo for the win.
The brave coward, too, scared to paddle the aforementioned “Chopes” but no matter because no waves will appear during the increasingly cursed waiting period ushering him directly to his second championship with, I suppose, much adulation.
Huzzah.
But also “Chopes.”
Days ago, the world’s preeminent surf thinker, a veritable Buddha, published an important piece on the intimate outdoor blog The Inertia declaring that the Tahitian wave has been misgendered.
And even though I know better, having grown up in Hawaii and spent considerable time in Polynesia, I’ve been mispronouncing Teahupo’o along with everybody else. Perhaps that’s why it seems to me that this ramp-up to the Summer Olympics is a good time to change that egregious habit. Soon the eyes of the world will be turned to a tiny, incredibly picturesque village on the island of Tahiti, perceived entirely in the context of international surfing. A village whose residents have, for decades now, been incredibly generous, sharing their remarkable natural resource with the hordes of foreigners who descend on this little slice of paradise every season to shoot their videos and hold their contests and establish their reputations and earn their salaries…and yet still say the place’s name wrong. Yeah, let’s fix that. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the proper pronunciation is “Tear-hoo-poh-oh.”
There can be only one “world’s heaviest wave“, and that title rests soundly with the wave at Teahupo’o (don’t make saying it more difficult than it need be; it’s pronounced Cho-poo).
Ouch.
Sam George crying into his Nia Peeples scented pillow tonight?
Should we make a Nia Peeples scented candle for him tonight?
Discuss.