Tyler Wright (pictured) breathing through a straw.
Tyler Wright (pictured) breathing through a straw.

Surfing miracle Tyler Wright wows medical establishment by overcoming most insane health obstacle yet!

Chas Smith

By

“I’ve had a fair few doctors and specialists tell me they don’t know how I do what I do."

Tyler Wright continues to defy science. The two-time World Surf League champion has overcome obstacle after obstacle, each one more critical, each one more unfavorable than the last, as part of her professional surfing journey. From having a dad that made her surf when she was young, grouchily, to overcoming, debilitating post-viral syndrome, Wright has truly etched her visage on the Mount Rushmore of inspirational heroes.

Right between Def Leppard’s Rick Allen and the chicken that lived for 18-months without her head.

Now, the brave 29-year-old has admitted to beating the most insane health hurdle yet.

Perpetual suffocation.

After advancing to the quarters in Portugal, Wright declared, “I’ve had a fair few doctors and specialists tell me they don’t know how I do what I do. I found out that most of the time I’m under-oxygenated and semi-suffocating. My airways are too small basically, and over the off-season I had it expanded. Honestly it’s been life-changing, it’s the sanest I’ve ever felt. It’s really successful, it’s changing my life, but it’s also a process and that’s only step one and a half of a multi-step process.”

One of multi-steps was getting seven screws drilled into her head.

“So through the off-season I got a maxillary palatal expander [a device that widens the mouth] in. Essentially I’ve got seven screws in my head, between nine and 17 millimetres [in length] and in the off-season I expanded it. Essentially it popped the bone and I got seven millimetres [added airway space] through that.”

But can you imagine performing at a championship-level all while choking to death?

You can’t because you are merely human and not a surfing medical miracle.

Huzzah.

The King is back! Gabriel Medina in unstoppable form in Portugal.

Comment live, MEO Rip Curl Pro Portugal, “Surfing is nature’s most powerful aphrodisiac”

Derek Rielly

By

Get loaded! Unload!

Kelly Slater surfing after hip surgery.
Kelly Slater shaking off the hip labrum blues in Hawaii. | Photo: @peterkingphoto

Kelly Slater blows minds with turn of the Hawaiian season despite injury withdrawal from MEO Rip Curl Pro Portugal

Derek Rielly

By

"Hip works."

Four days ago, the 11-time world champion Kelly Slater shocked surf fans with his sudden withdrawal from the MEO Rip Curl Pro Portugal, an event notorious for the number of crucial heats held in the ghastliest conditions due its proximity to Atlantic Ocean storms.

Kelly Slater, who just turned fifty-two, blamed his no-show on the slow recovery from surgery to repair the ring of cartilage that lines the rim of the hip joint socket.

The pelvis of Kelly Slater has been an ongoing issue with the star, his hip real bad ever since he did the splits on a wipeout at Sunset thirty-two years ago when he thought he’d snapped his femur. A few years later he was towing in Tahiti and  doing flips off the back of waves when he landed weird, hurt his hip, and then in the summer of 2000 he went in for surgery to clean up the mess. 

Announcing the withdrawal Slater wrote,

“Still dealing with hip recovery and still in pain with basic mobility. thanks for the messages from Portuguese fans and apologies I won’t be seeing you in Supertubos. Hoping to feel better for Bell’s (the first event I surfed as a full time tour surfer in 1992). Fingers crossed the World Surf League scores some good waves in Portugal and good luck to everyone.”

Portugal has never been kind to Kelly Slater. A couple of world titles were pulled from his grip after losing to local wildcards in awful low-tide conditions. At the time it seemed an undignified end for the greatest of all time, like an old-aged In-N-Out worker slinging burgers and fries in his eighth decade. 

In a subsequent Instagram story, Slater admitted “I may never sue there again.”

Anyway, surf fans were delighted to see the injury hasn’t slowed down the champ who was filmed by his anti-woke crusader boy-pal Peter King digging a fjord on a broad Hawaiian canvas.

“Hip works,” quipped Parker Coffin to which Kelly Slater replied, “Hip hurts but not twisting much or doing airs and she goes a little. Still quite a bit of pain.” 

Watch here! 

(Can’t post on BeachGrit ’cause PK blocked us etc.)

Maybe ’cause of this or this, this, this, this or this. 

Lucy Small (right) curious.
Lucy Small (right) curious.

Surf feminist hero Lucy Small openly ponders French existence!

Chas Smith

By

"How are French people even alive?"

One of the greatest surfing stories, post Covid-19 pandemic, is the rise of Lucy Small. But who could have ever seen it coming? Lightly known regional Australian longboarder boldly standing up to the patriarchy, pre Barbie Movie, and demanding equal pay for equal work? Yes, Small became a surf feminist hero overnight and has forever changed activism as it relates to the sport of queens.

And, thus, the French should be both honorée and inquiète, in equal measure, after the diminutive cross-stepper openly questioned their existence.

Small, who appears to be in l’hexagone ahead of this summer’s Paris Olympics, has taken to social media in order to ponder, “How are French people even alive? The morning, I was at the market I was at the market and there was literally people sitting down having glasses of red wine at 9:00 am. Everyone’s just like sitting around having their kilos of butter and smoking cigars and living until they’re 125. And then they’re all like super hot when they’re old.”

Do you wonder the same thing?

Or are you frustrated that Small is blatantly trading in the sort of bald stereotypical thinking that both blinds and plagues those in power?

Sweeping generalizations etc.

On the subject, just last evening, my young daughter stated, “I identify as Danish, Canadian and French.” I told her that French Canadians were routinely dismissed as boorish. She replied, “That’s why I said Canadian and French, not French Canadian.”

Smart.

And on that note, should Small have considered how/where we are born is utterly meaningless? That we, as humans, have outgrown such constricting rigidity and are free to be whoever/whatever we wish?

For shame, Lucy.

For shame.

Canadian locals depressed about Erin Brooks? (If you have never watched the show Letterkenny, do yourself a favor and tune in.)
Canadian locals depressed about Erin Brooks? (If you have never watched the show Letterkenny, do yourself a favor and tune in.)

Surf journalist pilgrimages to Canada to gauge Great White North’s depression over phenom Erin Brooks’ Olympic snub

Chas Smith

By

(If there was) any other way.

Wherefore art thou, Erin Brooks? But imagine how history might have unfolded if the repêchage had been drafted differently but one week ago. For it was then and it was there, in Puerto Rico, that the World Surfing Games closed the window on Olympic qualification for the 2024 Paris Games. Only the most ignorant of surf fans will not know that Gabriel Medina stunned all, punching a much-needed third ticket for Brazil that he will take. Much-needed because one of the other two belongs to Filipe Toledo. Only the most core lord will not know that Siqi Yang will paddle the “Cave of Skulls” for the People’s Republic of China.

Only the most hardened and rude, sociopathic even, will not know that one of surfing’s brightest up-and-coming talents, the 16-years-young Erin Brooks, failed to qualify after securing Canadian citizenship in a last minute coup and appearing poised to deliver the Great White North a gold medal in the Grand Turquoise South.

Yes, the ultra-talented goofy foot might have put Canada on the surfing map had she repêchaged all the way through Puerto Rico’s 1300 odd heats, arriving at Teahupo’o and flashing her ability, claiming the peak of the podium,

Can you envisage that parallel universe? “Ô Canada! Terre de nos aïeux, ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux!” ringing through the tropical air?

Like Narnia, winter might have evaporated. Snow being replaced with clover and daisies. Beer with banana daiquiris. But how to the locals feel about that? As one of the world’s leading, if not the world’s leading, surf journalist(s), I had to discover.

The flight to Canada from California is relatively easy. Two plus hours to Vancouver but the City of Rain is already in the pocket of Siqi Yang so further east, I went, to the burgh of Revelstoke some two plus hours outside of Kelowna. The folk here are simple, kind. Hearts that beat maple syrup. I arrived too late to properly gauge relative depression about missing out on a changed sporting landscape so drank a bubbly maple sap water then went to bed.

In the morning, refreshed, I set out to find truths. Folk seemed happy, oot and aboot. Not sad and also not very aware of Erin Brooks and what might have been. Odd, particularly because a general understanding of surf floats on the colder breeze.

Koa Smith.

I heard whispers, in mangled French, that he was inbound.

Kai Lenny too.

What?

Maybe I misunderstood. Big if true.

But what can it actually mean? Are Canadians, as a whole, pivoting away from professional competitive surfing as the sport of kings’ benchmark?

Embracing a new form of populist surfing where they, The People™, determine which surfer is ultimate?

More, certainly, as the story develops.

Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by @theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
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