Surf tour change puts 52-year-old Kelly
Slater on track for improbable 12th world title!
By Derek Rielly
"Holding it at Lower Trestles year after year
turned Finals Day into a low-stakes hostage situation."
It’s possible to agree, I think, on the following two
matters as superficially contradictory as they may seem at
a first pass.
One, the sudden-death Finals Day format is a terrific way to
build the fevers of spectators and push surfers into hitherto
unseen levels of performance.
(Think Stephanie Gilmore, unbeatable, as she mowed through the
top five to win an eighth world title and scramble Carissa Moore so
hard the five-timer quit the tour shortly after.)
As fans, we’ve been frog-marched to Lowers. The pros, I’m
guessing—apart from Toledo who lives in nearby San Clemente, is
scared of big tropical reef waves, and knows Lowers better than you
know the opening lines of your favorite Taylor Swift song—hate
Lowers Finals Day even more than we do.
The long overdue change to Finals Day will have a profound and
lasting effect on the tour.
Toledo, for one, ain’t ever gonna win a world title ever
again.
And it opens the door not just for Jack Robinson and John John
Florence but, incredibly, to an old man in his fifty-third year and
three decades after he claimed the first of his eleven world
titles.
The road to Kelly Slater 12 needs a little grease, of course,
wild cards, bigger than usual swells, and it’s improbable as all
hell.
But, when has improbable stopped Kelly Slater?
Cue, eight-to-ten-foot Cloudbreak, and the last meaningful swell
of the 2025 season.
Who would bet against a man who’s been surfing Cloudbreak for
almost forty years, whose artistry quivers even the limpest
organ?
Dare you to dream?
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Breaking: Cloudbreak to replace Lower
Trestles as World Surf League Finals Day stop
By Chas Smith
Shouts of joy in most corners, bitter tears in the
Toledo household.
The shock continues for surf fans, this
morning, as the World Surf League has announced that Cloudbreak
will replace Lower Trestles as “the crowner of champions.” The
soft-ish San Clemente point-esque break had been “the decider” for
the past three years, gifting small wave wizard Filipe Toledo
back-to-back cups.
Today, the World Surf League (WSL) announces Cloudbreak,
Fiji, as the location for the 2025 WSL Finals. The WSL Finals is
the one-day, winner-take-all competition to determine the men’s and
women’s World Champions at the end of the Championship Tour (CT)
season.
The dates for the 2025 WSL Finals, as well as the full CT
schedule, will be announced later this season after the Lexus WSL
Finals in San Clemente, Calif.
And…
“We are stoked that the World Surf League has chosen
Cloudbreak, Fiji, as the venue for the 2025 WSL Finals,” said Brent
Hill, CEO of Tourism Fiji. “Our waves and warm hospitality await
surf enthusiasts from around the world. We look forward to
showcasing Fiji as a world-class surfing destination. This event
boosts our global visibility as well as uplifts communities and
inspires our local surfers. Vinaka vakalevu, WSL, for recognizing
Fiji as the ultimate destination for this event.”
Exciting days (starting in 2025).
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Surf forecasting website reveals shock
reason Olympic surfing to be conducted in Tahiti not Europe
By Chas Smith
"What is this madness?"
Where would we be without Surfline? The wave
forecasting company, which began as a humble phone in line nearly
40 years ago, has truly changed what it means to be a surfer. In
the past times, the aforementioned would have to drive around in
order to see waves with their own eyes. The smarter set might
figure out how to read meteorological data but most were lost in a
caveman-esque cave of unknowing before going.
Now, surfers can merely log on to computers, pay a fee and be
treated to live cameras of their favorite spots, spots that they
might be thinking about visiting, even spots voyeuristically
interesting but too intimidating to paddle. Like Teahupo’o for
small wave Brazilian wizard Filipe Toledo, for example,
Well, as it happens, and as the surf fan certainly knows, the
surfing component of the Olympics will be held at Head Place in
mere weeks. It is the only event to be held outside of Europe and
Surfline just revealed the shock reason why.
Kurt Korte is Surfline’s VP of Forecasting explains in
straightforward terms, “France gets good surf, even epic surf like
we saw last October at the Quiksilver Festival. The timing of the
Olympics, however, isn’t ideal. The months of July and August are
typically slower for surf because the dominant storm track over the
North Atlantic retreats northward and weakens some during the
summer months. This significantly lowers the chances of quality
surf in France. So to maximize the chances of scoring good surf
during the event window, Olympic organizers realized the best
option was Tahiti.”
Stunned surf fans trying to decipher the meaning. Utterly
confused as to why information on where and when swell arrive was
factored in to a decision about competitive surfing.
Strange days.
Strange days indeed.
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Surfing icon Shane Dorian offers epic
$48,000 four-day surf camp on Costa Rica’s magical Nicoya
Peninsula!
By Derek Rielly
“Personal instruction from world-champion surfer
and head coach of the U.S. Olympic surf team, Shane Dorian.”
Now, the daddy to teen heartthrob Jackson Dorian and former
world number four is offering surfers “four days of wellness” at
the wildly luxurious Casa Chameleon resort in Costa Rica.
For $48,000, or $12,000 per day, although the package only
includes three days of surf lessons, you’ll receive “personal
instruction from world-champion surfer and head coach of the US
Olympic surf team”, you’ll “learn the lessons of longevity in the
Blue Zone”, some spa treatments are included and if surfing under
Shane Dorian’s tutelage starts to get old other activities include
jungle zip lines, hikes and horseback riding on the
beach.
The spiel is compelling, although what world title Doz won is
unclear.
If you’re a surfer of any caliber, you know Shane Dorian.
The Hawaii-based world champion and head coach of the 2024 U.S.
Olympic surf team is one of the world’s best big-wave riders—that’s
a swell reaching 20 feet high or greater. For four nights and three
days, he’ll be your personal instructor, teaching you his
techniques via hands-on lessons in the waters off the coast of
Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula.
This region is one of the world’s Blue Zones, renowned for
the longevity of its locals thanks to their active, healthy
lifestyles; in Costa Rica, it’s as much about mind as body, keeping
positive and relaxed in a permanent state of pura vida. That’s all
part of the experience at the Casa Chameleon
at Las Catalinas resort, a 21-villa property that will be your
base for this adventure; the modern rooms, each at least 720 square
feet in size, all have their own private infinity-edge plunge pool.
You can unwind there in between surf sessions or opt to explore on
land: The resort has a 2,250-foot zip line through the jungle, as
well as a herd of horses to go riding on the beach. Even better,
consider a hike through the rainforests of the nearby Tenorio
volcano via its three hanging bridges.
When you need a break from such exertions, there’s an
on-site spa, or you can practice elasticity yoga and meditation
alfresco amid the tropical breeze.
Kanye West to take $18 million hit after
failed renovation “disembowels” iconic Tadao Ando Malibu
house!
By Derek Rielly
“Kanye West bought an architectural treasure
– then gave it a violent remix.”
The Chicago-born chanteur and fiddler of studio knobs,
Kanye West, latterly known as Ye, is set to piss away roughly
twenty mill after his troubled three-year renovation of an
iconic Tadao Ando house in Malibu was stopped by city authorities
and Ye figured maybe easier just to sell the joint.
Ye, who is forty-seven, was once married to the billionairess
Kim Kardashian but now prefers the company of Melbourne architect
Bianca Censori, famous for crotch-revving curves that surpass even
his ex-wife.
The Tadao Ando Malibu House, which he bought for fifty-seven
mill in 2021, became, for a time at least, an experiment where Ye
indulged his fascination for architecture alongside his new gal’s
university-honed skills.
In a just published story in the New
Yorker, Ian Parker tells the compelling saga of Ye
buying the joint from financier Richard Sachs, who originally
wanted seventy-five mill for the house – and employing a cowboy
tradesman called Tony Saxon to sleep in the place while
simultaneously destroying it, eventually re-listing it for sale at
$39 mill.
According to Saxon, Ye told him, “I’ve heard a lot about
you. You’re like a hurricane! I like you. I like your style.” As
they walked through the stripped rooms, Ye kept asking, “You got
this out? You did this?”
He began to describe his plans for the house. Saxon asked,
“Are you telling me this hypothetically, or do you want me to do
it?” Ye wanted him to do it. As Saxon saw it, “He was so sick of
everyone around him.” Saxon demurred; he didn’t have a company or a
license. He was just a dude with a minivan and some stamina. “But
he goes, ‘You can do it! Don’t give me that. You can do this! Don’t
say no!’ ” Recalling this, Saxon laughed. “Some inspiring
shit!”
Saxon warmed to Ye, and not just because of the flattery.
“I’m not in any way familiar with his music,” he told me. “But I
kind of got him. We are very similar in a lot of ways.” Saxon had
been given his own bipolar diagnosis and detected in Ye some
similar behaviors. Later, after they got to know each other a
little, Saxon brought this up. “I’m, like, ‘Are you on medication
for it? I just started taking it a couple of months ago, and it
fucking helped me.’ ”
Ye suggested that Saxon wear black and told him to be
discreet: there were no permits for work on the house. Saxon’s
storytelling, like Ye’s, can digress, and his experience on Malibu
Road, which lasted about six weeks, is now the subject of his
lawsuit, which centers on alleged underpayment and a back injury.
But the outline of events is clear, and many of the details are
confirmed by photographs and messages archived on Saxon’s phone.
Within a few days of that first meeting, Saxon had become something
much closer to a project leader than to a day laborer.
He helped assemble a small crew by enlisting people he knew
and a few outside contractors who’d been working at the house when
he showed up. Starting on the day he met Ye, Saxon didn’t go home
forseveral weeks. He found a mattress at the house; a
friend later brought him some clothing in a trash bag, and his
guitar. Saxon began taking the house apart. Saxon’s videos include one in which he’s helping topple one of
the chimneys. Another shows someone swinging a hammer at a
bathroom’s black-and-white marble walls. A third demonstrates how a
handsome glass balustrade, the kind you’re almost bound to find in
a modern museum, shatters into windshield fragments when you tap
its corner with a sledgehammer. In a fourth, Saxon and another man
are demolishing the hot tub with two jackhammers.