Kai Mckenzie, in hospital after losing leg to Great White.
Kai Mckenzie, minus his right stilt, and pals, including Noa Deane (in high-vis), in hozzy.

Surfer Kai Mckenzie who lost leg in Great White attack reveals legendary humour, “Spot something missing?”

Even after losing his right stilt to a Great White, there's no dampening this surfer's joy for life.

The word legend gets thrown around a little too liberally, particularly around here, and mostly from my fingers hitting the keys, but even the most complete thesaurus comes up blank when it comes to describing Australian surfer Kai Mckenzie. 

A little recap for those who’ve swung in late.

Kai Mckenzie is a twenty-three shredder from Bonny Hills on NSW’s North Coast who was hit by a ten-foot Great White while surfing a break wall in Port Macquarie, yeah, same joint the one-time title contender Mick Campbell was from. 

Kai belted the shark even after it took off his right leg, made it to shore alive, but barely, where an off-duty copy ripped off his dog’s lead to fashion a tourniquet thereby saving the kid’s life.

His leg was miraculously washed ashore shortly after the attack where it was packed on ice, chucked on the car ferry that takes you back across the Hastings River and rushed, complete with cop escort to Port Macquarie Base Hozzy in the hope it could be reattached. 

 

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A post shared by @kai_mckenzie

It couldn’t, but Kai Mckenzie ain’t weeping in bed and lamenting his misfortune.

In a post today, and surrounded by friends including fellow Rage teamrider Noa Deane and former Skegss bassist-singer Toby Cregan, he wrote: 

Spot something missing ? Hahah, so good to have so many amazing people behind me I really appreciate it, love this crew so much thanks for coming yesterday and to all the donations fucking unreal love you guys the links in my bio if you’d like to donate.

Cregan wrote: Best hang I’ve had in a hospital that’s for sure. KMAC solid as a

For whatever reason, Great Whites have turned pretty little Port Macquarie into a place where you may wanna think twice before going for a shred.

Right now, there are fifteen Great Whites near or just offshore including, likely, the fish that took off Kai Mckenzie’s right leg.

Here’s the link for Kai’s GoFundMe. 

 

 

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Open Thread: Comment live on Day Two of Olympic Shortboard Surfing!

We're baaaaaack!

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John John Florence, Teahupoo, Paris 2024
John John Florence, team USA flag bearer, in an out of the water.

Team USA’s surfers put world to sword in wildly commanding performance, day one, Paris 2024

Once again the USA stamps on the heathens and little people of silly little nations with imperialist certainty.

Round 1 of surfing’s bid for Olympic glory in the books.

Perfunctory, without death or drama.

Teahupo’o (or “Teahupoo’ooo’ooo’oo”, as Shannon Hughes insisted) was without claws. Overhead sets at best. Still requiring elite level commitment and skill, of course, but nothing to set the world alight.

A layman, tuning in on the back of pre-event hype in mainstream media, might well have wondered what all the fuss was about.

This is the world’s deadliest wave?

This is surfing’s most spectacular amphitheatre?

As it was, the competition struggled to hold my interest. I tuned in for the third heat of the day (featuring Toledo, mercifully) and lasted through the rest of the men’s and into the first half of the women’s. But it was an effort not to switch to House of The Dragon.

Barton Lynch presided over half of the commentary, Chris Cote the other. It was like a busman’s holiday.

Lynch did his best to explain surfing to the man on the street, if the man on the street was an imbecile.

“It’s called a tube, because that’s the exact shape of it that you see from the inside.”

Both Lynch and Hughes fulfilled the classic punditry trope of apologising on behalf of our double world champion, and his inability to make a backhand tube in even mediocre Teahupo’o.

If you didn’t see it, Toledo’s late effort that garnered a 6.23 and saw him finish second does not tell the tale of the heat. It was his final wave of three attempts, caught under priority and shakily made.

The first two attempts, decent quality waves that he was in prime position for, saw him pitched over the falls, looking for all the world like a surfing dilettante, as opposed to the two-time world champion, supremely gifted surfer, and man who has (allegedly) been training specifically for this competition in lieu of his day job since January.

The struggle, the inner turmoil, is very real.

As such, he finished just ahead of Kanoa Igarashi, who, in equally confusing fashion given his vast experience at Teahupo’o, only attempted one wave. It was the worst performance of the round.

Gabriel Medina dominated the next heat, as expected, but without looking dominant. That honour was split between John Florence and Griffin Colapinto, both of whom flew the Stars and Stripes high and hummed Star Spangled Banner as they locked in heat totals over seventeen points.

God bless America.

And a firm nod of respect to the least known of the three Japanese surfers in Reo Inaba, who put his WCT challengers in Rio Waida and Leo Fioravanti firmly to the sword with a comprehensive victory.

In the women’s division, the athletes of surfing’s top tier prevailed, much as expected.

Once again the USA lorded it over the rest of the world, stamping down on the heathens and little people of silly little nations with imperialist certainty.

Caroline Marks, Caitlin Simmers and Carissa Moore laid waste to all countries before them, taking heat wins with a Trumpian disrespect for their rivals.

Marks, for her part, did the best barrel riding I’ve ever seen from her. She was top American dog in both men’s and women’s competition with a stupendous (and thoroughly deserved) 17.93 heat total.

The likeable Molly Picklum once again failed to find the spark she had in Hawaii at the start of the year. Even a meat tray won’t console those down under who surely have the highest hopes for her.

But it should be noted that her total of 8.44, underwhelming as it may have been, would still have been good enough to win the previous heat, won by teammate and medical marvel, Tyler Wright.

Scant consolation for Australia, a real shame for the rest of the world.

I’d drifted off the world of deceit, dragons and Targaryen lore by the time the fourteen-year-old Chinese phenom Siqi Yang surfed, but she remains my hero and heir to any throne she wants.

It’s an odd sort of experience for these Olympians though, isn’t it?

Cast away across the narrow sea, far from the buzz and thrum of all the real Olympic action in and around Paris. I found myself feeling a little sorry for them, subjected to what amounts to just another surf contest. The bastard children of the Olympics.

But I did note a thing or two the WSL might learn from Olympic/ISA handling of this contest. The website, for one, is vastly superior. A far more pleasurable experience in many facets of finding the information you need, as opposed to that abominable WSL effort.

And if you go to the Olympic site today, you will see not an infuriating and ambiguous clock that might signify the restart of competition, or may morph into another clock of ambiguity, ticking away the lay days. No, on the Olympic site, it clearly states that “competition is very likely to be called on”along with the scheduled time. What a delight.

Furthermore, all the judges are listed on the site by name! A rare transparency when compared to the cloak and dagger judging approach preferred by the WSL.

Anyway, I see some swell in the forecast. Winds are sketchy, but the baying Olympic crowd might yet be treated to Teahupo’ooo’oooo’oooo’ooo’ooo in all its death defying glory.

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Mass complaining shuts down Chas Smith
Hello, Meta, I haaaaate Chas Smith!

Meta shuts down controversial surf journalist Chas Smith after “mass complaining”

Nothing sells tickets and draws eyeballs like controversy…

The great journalist H.L. Mencken once said the job of the reporter was “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

Now, I can’t name names here, which itself is a symptom of the affliction brought upon this very website.

Even the moderately astute reader will discern the missing names and characters in this opinion piece, and the fact I have to engage in this solipsism is part of the problem itself. The implied threat of the cudgel of a lawsuit – real in this – by deep pocketed, even if one would win in the end, is enough to stifle free speech discourse is tragic enough.

But to have missed out on the deluge of stories that Chas would –and should – be writing now about the thin-skinned surfer and a certain blood relative means us, dear readers, have lost out on some fine, caustic, penetrating, humorous, insightful Smith-ian ramblings is alone a good enough reason to chafe under the jackboot of mercurial censorship.

Well, only partially mercurial, which is where the truly tragic part of the story lies.

Now, the mercurial aspect is the hive mind of Meta was brow-beaten into pulling Chas’ Instagram account (@surfjournalist), set off when a certain relative of a certain surfer sicced an online mob into mass complaining about Chas’ account due to a certain story, which was typically ridiculous and clearly ribald musings.

The internet is a jungle and the word viral is just a form of “Lord of the Flies” mob rule, passion, zaniness and pure subjectivity, with decision made with obvious superficial analysis. My son, for example, runs an online business in the soccer world, and when he posted a picture of his knee post-surgery somehow that was deemed overtly sexual.

But you can almost understand, if somewhat morosly, how when an angry person can motivate a small herd of fellow angry people to complain, the site figures cut out the cause of the whinging and just move on.

However, what is far more disconcerting is when this same self-pitying, self-aggrandizing whinging brings out entities that threaten legal action. I mean, big entities, using the threat backed by the ability to write checks to law firms, while fully knowing their position is bogus, is really shitty.

The entities I’m talking about – and I’m tip dancing around, equally cowed by the possible ramifications of poking a few mega corpo bears who in their own respective way oversee the consuming, largely pointless past-time denizens here are enamoured with.

It’s also shortsighted.

Nothing sells tickets and draws eyeballs like controversy and good stories. The essence of drama is actually quite simple. Not necessarily easy to execute but painfully obvious to identify.

Drama is the choices and actions people undertake when under pressure. When confronted by a foe, a challenge, an object in the way of pursuing your dreams and capturing glory, do you run or fight for those dreams?

If, to pick a random, made-up, totally fabricated example, should someone choose to, say, oh I don’t know, just riffing here, not to paddle for a wave at a particular location, and then finds oneself (see could be a guy or girl, as I weasel around any actionable details) back at this spot with the world’s eyes upon you, you have D-R-A-M-A right here in river city.

But when said entities allow themselves to be manipulated by the virtual mob, as well as a misguided attempt to stifle a crucible moment of choice, they lose because their sports theater has lost is Iago, it’s Fredo, it’s “agony of defeat.”

Look, I get that the Olympics are a jingoistic display of xenophobia wrapped in the entertaining gauze of nations coming together, and I buy in as much as anyone.

I actually love it.

But the nuclear mon pere and corpo smack down of one guy in a small corner of the world is, well, sad and unfortunate, and maybe worse, an ugly harbinger of what could be.

And, I guess, what is.

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Caroline Marks (insert) showing off House USA. Photo: Instagram
Caroline Marks (insert) showing off House USA. Photo: Instagram

US surf team turns back on temptations at sea and opts to stay on land instead of Olympic love boat

"The Team USA housing in Teahupo’o is within a private home and all furniture is provided within the home."

(Apologies for yesterday’s outage. What a stupid, stupid mess. And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.)

The 2024 Olympiad is officially underway after Paris staged a grand opening ceremony. Boats on the Seine, the Tour Eiffel awash in laser beams, French-Canadian Celine Dion leaving the rain glittered audience ultra moved. Three weeks ago, now, I heard Bernard Arnault’s son Antoine declare that the family’s LVMH had designed the show and hell would come if it was not a success. Well, he, like Lachlan Murdoch, can rest easy.

Halfway across the world, and twelve hours earlier, Olympic surfers showcased their own piece of France, this one with crystalline waters and impossibly green hills. Much of the world getting its first glimpse of Tahiti and its gorgeous “End of the Road.”

As those who have been to Teahupo’o know, the town is very small with no hotels or McMansions. As such, Olympic committee organizers opted to commandeer a repurposed cargo ship as a floating athlete village. Tales of lusty encounters between medal hopefuls are all-to-common at most Olympic Games and it must be thought that adding warm tropical air, poisson cru and the gentle sway of the ocean currents would only heighten amorous feelings.

Smart, then, for Team USA to avoid.

Julie Dussliere, Senior VP, Chief of Paralympics & Internally Managed Sports, told People Magazine, “Athletes are free to stay wherever they choose. Many nations and athletes have elected to rent homes in the Teahupo’o area in lieu of staying on the cruise ship. Team USA’s property is located within the town of Teahupo’o near the ‘End of the Road’ and the Point.”

Providing more context, Dussliere explained, “All houses are typical of homes in French Polynesia with a heavy emphasis on outdoor living and functional outdoor spaces. The Team USA housing in Teahupo’o is within a private home and all furniture is provided within the home. The beds are not cardboard.”

Florida’s Caroline Marks gave a peek of the house to her many fans on Instagram and the deck does look like a very nice place to take in the sunset whilst nursing a bowl of poisson cru and snuggling….

…uh oh.

More as the story develops.

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