“I started (surfing) when I was 20 something..."
I checked this morning to see if the Rio Pro is running only to discover it is not and also, a deeper more troubling discovery. That I don’t care about it. Now, in a normal year shaping up to deliver an exciting final Finals Day at Lower Trestles, I might. This, as you know, is not a normal year.
The Olympics Games, you see, will be declared “open” in basically one month and with it, surfing’s glorious five-ringed return. While I will be in Paris, for the ballet, our brave surfers will be halfway across the world at Teahupo’o ready to face fear itself.
Head Place, as it is known to those who speak the local dialect fluently, is certainly one of the scariest, if not the scariest, wave on earth. Appearing from the deep with little to no warning and folding onto a freshly invigorated reef, we will, without doubt, witness stunning acts of courage and brave acts of cowardice. And, today, the Olympics celebrated the “late bloomers” who will be looking chaos in its almond eye.
The piece opens by declaring that surfers usually learn the pastime of kings as younger women and men. Carlos Munoz, for example, took his charges surfing when they were two months old. Filipe Toledo’s daddy Ricardo took him at 10 months old.
Well, we know how that turned out for Toledo. The small wave wizard won two back to back titles at baby Lowers but refuses to paddle Head Place. So terrified that he scored an historic 0.00 heat total there once and was recently beaten to a pulp by two geriatrics.
Might Santa Vevere be next to rub his tiny features into the dirt.
“I started when I was 20 something,” she told Olympics.com. “That was the first try.”
“We didn’t want to take any lessons because we thought, ‘Ah, it’s going to be easy, like snowboarding. You just buy a pro board and go like a pro, but no, everything was a bit different,” she continued, describing how she was on and off for a few years before really committing. “I just love surfing. It’s always been for me, that if I like something, I just love it. And I know that I really want to improve, and I want to do it from all my heart, I jump in or I don’t jump,” Vevere said. “That’s why I think it’s a big passion for me and I love what I do and I try to be better and better and better.”
Finland’s Lukas McMahon also makes an appearance. Though not a VAL, or Vulnerable Adult Learner, he began his journey at 12-years of age, and Erin Brooks is also profiled, learning at 12 too.
Back to Vevere, though, and the others like her. Do you think they will put heads down and pitch over the ledge or do you think they will take inspiration from the Li’l Lion and… not?
Should we open a betting pool?
More as the story develops.