Justine Dupont on a World Surf League ignored beast. Photo: 100-foot wave
Justine Dupont on a World Surf League ignored beast. Photo: 100-foot wave

Controversy explodes in wake of Laura Enever big wave record as World Surf League accused of putting dirty finger on scale!

The "global home of surfing" steps in it. Again.

The champagne was not yet warm when controversy rippled though the surf world over Laura Enever’s recent big wave record. Hours ago, the World Surf League declared Narabeen’s first daughter to be the Guinness World Records™ title holder for “largest wave surfed paddle-in (female).”

Awkward syntax aside, a real moment. Enever, 31, no doubt deserved all the praise and accolades for her North Shore bomb. The one-time junior champion’s transition to meaty water beasts truly an inspiration.

“Huge congratulations to Laura for this incredible achievement,” Jessi Miley-Dyer, World Surf League Chief of Sport, declared. “Laura is fearless, committed, and a real inspiration, and I’m so proud to celebrate her. These World Records really allow us to shine the spotlight on athletes like Laura who are pushing the boundaries of Big Wave surfing.”

Notably missing from any chatter, whatsoever and however, was France’s Justine Dupont. The French charger, who now resides in Nazaré, was part of a Cortes Bank strike mission. It garnered her three awards at the just-concluded Big Wave Challenge awards.

Biggest Wave, Ride of the Year and Surfer of the Year (women)

Her giant, while towed, was estimated to be 75-feet angry.

Notably, the Big Wave Challenge awards are no longer World Surf League owned.

World Surf League Puts Con In Condecession

The World Surf League, despite “really wanting to shine the spotlight on athletes pushing the boundaries of Big Wave surfing,” had no representative there with tape measure.

Thus zero Guinness love.

Now, those who have made big waves their business are properly bewildered by the seemingly condescending way that the World Surf League has co-opted the riding of giants. Billing itself as the “global home of surfing,” the WSL has made a mockery of everything that is not high-performance shortboarding. The longboard tour is a joke, the Big Wave World Tour a fraud.

It has also made a mockery of high-performance shortboarding just to make sure.

Every television production the World Surf League has attached itself to has either ended in embarrassment (The Ultimate Surfer) or failure (Make or Break).

Might Dupont’s wave being part of HBO’s award-winning 100-Foot Wave series be part of the cold shoulder?

Something more cruel?

Certainly more as the story develops.

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Laura Enever (pictured) crushing.
Laura Enever (pictured) crushing.

Surf beauty snags record for largest ever wave by woman!

It's Laura Enever's world, we're just living in it.

To know Laura Enever is to love her. The flaxen haired beauty from Narabeen, Australia burst into minds and hearts as a feisty junior way back in 2009 when she was dubbed Champion of Youngsters. Her skill on a surfboard, undeniable. Enever completed on the World Surf League Championship Tour for years then somehow transitioned to a big wave surfer over the years, a pivot no one saw coming.

On Wednesday, she captured the official record for largest ever wave paddled into by woman.

43.6 feet to be exact.

The beast was stroked into off Oahu’s fabled North Shore. It was captured in all its glory by exceedingly famous water photographer Daniel Russo.

“I knew when it picked me up that it was a massive wave,” Enever told The Washington Post, “But then when I looked over the edge and saw how far I had to go down and how big the drop was, I was like, ‘Okay, this is the biggest wave you ever caught.’”

It took the World Surf League 10 months to certify the feat. The delay likely caused by ex-CEO Erik Logan making shenanigans.

Being a silly goose etc.

“At the end of the day, paddle surfing is just you in the ocean and being out there,” Enever continued. “You don’t have that assistance from a jet ski and all that speed and power to tow you into the wave. It’s just all on you and your ocean knowledge. Obviously, there can be a bit of luck to it, but it’s just about connecting with the ocean that day and that time.”

The 32-year-old’s wave topped the 42-footer that Andrea Moller paddled into at Pe’ahi in Maui in 2016.

Oahu > Maui or at least for now.

And please don’t forget that “democracy dies in darkness.”

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Kanoa Igarashi (pictured) being the world's smartest surfer. Photo: Instagram
Kanoa Igarashi (pictured) being the world's smartest surfer. Photo: Instagram

New class war erupts after revelation of world’s smartest surfer!

"Super unfair!"

There was once a time when things were simple and people stayed in their assigned categories. Bad boys were bad. Society girls were rich. Jocks were sporty. Nerds were smart. Weirdos were weird. Surfers had heads filled with air. Society existing in perfect balance. Of course, as it goes with evolution, the main attribute of any in their designated camp was counterbalanced so as not to give one ultimate power. Bad boys, for example, smoldered and attracted society girls, bringing them down lest they rise too high. Nerds were ugly and awkward lest they combine their big brains and good looks to clean up all the babes. Surfers, empty and vapid, a good enough time but never taken seriously.

Harmony.

Alas, all has been shattered. While nerds like Mark Zuckerberg has been attempting to shed his ugly and awkward for years, it is clearly not working.

Enter the World’s Smartest Surfer

The world’s smartest surfer was, once, Bron Heussenstamm. The Southern Californian wasn’t a great surfer, though good enough to regularly have photos appear in magazines. He wasn’t that smart, but smart enough to get into USC. Barton Lynch and Ace Buchan also considered “smart” but by surf’s wonderfully low standard.

Now?

Kanoa Igarashi has shattered the status quo.

Yesterday, the Japan-by-way-of-Huntington-Beach 26-year-old posted a studious self portrait. Was he examining surf reports? Maybe putting items in his online basket then taking them back out again?

No.

He was attending class at Harvard.

Igarashi attends Harvard. He is the world’s sitting surfing silver medalist. He is the current World Surf League number 14. He has boy band good looks.

His only burden?

The voice of a muppet.

And occasional bouts with Tourettes.

Igarashi having so much, while others have so little, has sparked a new class war, one that threatens to undermine the last bits of peace and goodwill on earth. Picketing currently being planned for Portugal, where Igarashi also lives an incredibly rich and satisfying European life.

Super unfair.

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Gabriel Medina warns of the dangers of plastic surgery following death of friend.
"Why risk your life for nothing?" writes Gabriel Medina. "Can you not understand? We are young, we have several other ways of feeling good, healthy, beautiful…"

Gabriel Medina in mourning after plastic surgery disaster kills friend

“This fake world will end up killing more and more young people."

The three-time world champion Gabriel Medina has written movingly of the dangerous pointlessness of plastic surgery following the death of a friend who was undergoing a “simple aesthetic” procedure.

Gabriel Medina, who turns thirty in December is two years off a divorce dissected in all its lurid details by media as well as an estrangement from his mammy and step-daddy, his mental health issues well-known.

Gabriel Medina posted on Instagram.

Attention

Today I lost a friend due to “simple” aesthetic procedures.

Oh world, it’s surreal, people…

Especially you WOMEN, this standard of “perfect” bodies that are impossible to achieve displayed on Instagram and in the media needs to end urgently.

Why risk your life for nothing? Can not understand. We are young, we have several other ways of feeling good, healthy, beautiful, if I can give some advice

We need to return to REALITY in everything. That’s how we are, period.

This FAKE world will end up killing more and more young people.

ATTENTION PEOPLE!!!

Only two months ago, Gabriel Medina wrote of his annus horribilis after he failed to make the top five.

Time to go back home

Many, or most, things will never be in our time. It was time to understand the process.. understand that sometimes gnt is part of other people’s process too. And this time I didn’t want to be selfish to think only of me. What if.. , but if I … , but… I did my best and prepared for that moment. This year was the most physical training in my career. So I came out calmly, and aware that I gave it all of me

Job was done now got a spot here in Teahupoo. But I’ve already received so many waves that changed my life in this exact place.

For years and years, I have faith and believe in God’s plan It’s supposed to be that way. Tomorrow is another day

Choices, learnings and looking to evolve more and more

Medina is now one of the most popular surfers on tour, with peers and fans, and received almost two thousand comments wishing him further glories etc.

Wrote Julian Wilson, one-time title contender and sparring partner who once made Medina cry, “You had some hurdles and you delivered some brilliance once again. Love watching you compete. I believe there’s 5 guys feeling a little lighter not having you in the draw at trestles. Onto the next chapter and keep inspiring us all along the way. Hats off brother.”

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Dane Reynolds surfing in Mexico after head injury
Dane Reynolds, back in the water the day after an almost-fatal head injury. | Photo: CH11

Dane Reynolds makes triumphant return to surf after almost fatal head injury in Mexico

One day after the freak accident that nearly killed him, Dane Reynolds climbs back on the horsey.

The go-for-broke Bakersfield-born surfer and former world number four Dane Reynolds has made a triumphant return to surfing after a freak accident that almost cost him his life. 

Dane Reynolds, whose Carpinteria idyll was shattered seven months ago when Travis and Kourtney Barker-Kardashian splurged $16.5 million buying Conan O’Brien’s redundant beach house, walked through a glass door in Mexico, shattering the glass and puncturing his forehead.

“That was a change of events,” Dane Reynolds says in the accompanying video, as he presses a t-shirt around his leaking head. Footage captured from the emergency room finds Reynolds supine yet calm, fly wide open, a gap in the flap as they say, body covered in his own blood. 

Dane Reynolds in a Mexican hospital.
Dane in a Mex hozzy bed.

It isn’t the first time Dane Reynolds has flirted with death.

Eight years ago, surf fans were turned into primitive savages after footage emerged of Chucky Rigano dropping in on Dane fluttering his wings in a long tube, at Sandpit in Santa Babs, California.

“I was thinking oh shit, I just hopped some Santa Barbara fisherman that’s gonna kill me. Then I looked closer, and it was Dane Reynolds, honestly one of my favourite surfers,” Chucky told BeachGrit. “The guy that yelled go was for sure yelling at Dane because he made it around the section and was getting pitted!

“He was super pissed initially, and had every right to be. Anyone, including myself would have snapped for sure. I honestly felt so bad and embarrassed as it gets. Imagine crapping your pants on a first date with a girl you really like, and times that by 10! I said I was beyond sorry multiple times and that I really didn’t see the guy.”

Anyway, in a new video just released on his CH11 YouTube channel, we discover that Dane Reynolds was in the water the very next day after being taped up in hospital.

Per the short’s accompanying blurb,

“Dane Reynolds’ first session in Mexico after busting down the door with his big dome piece. Yellow swim cap X OG Channel Islands Rookie at a sloppy right point.”

As Dane says, “Even when the conditions are shit, riding waves is the best thing in the world.”

In the video, Dane Reynolds’ famous daddy-body is heavy, massive like the country that gave him birth, yet when he surfs he becomes like a cowboy of the Westerns: ready to fire his guns at the drop of a hat, getting into a rage at the least provocation.

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