"Still no-one will admit that all we are doing is dragging his bald, bloodied, slightly pudgy corpse through the streets."
Consider how much of your life is spent waiting.
Waiting for the swell to fill in, or the tide to turn.
Waiting for the end of the day, the next holiday, or for her to reply.
Or just simply expecting something to come to you. Some upwelling of good fortune or an offer that might swing your life’s pendulum into motion.
We’re all guilty of it.
We’d waited seven years to come back to Fiji, only to wait for a few more days for the waves to show up. And when it filled in for the start of competition, it was enough to run through a full day of men’s round one and elimination, and women’s first round.
There were moments, as there always are, but you’d hardly say it was worth the wait.
I spent most of it drinking, gambling and playing pool, my attention drifting and divided. I’d bet heavily on Sierra Kerr and Erin Brooks, such were the odds. Some of you no doubt had, too. Some of these bets are still standing. Many are not. And you hardly need point out the folly of staking so much on two seventeen year old girls, talented as they may be, but untested at this level.
But what is gambling otherwise? I mulled this over internally as I stalked round the pool table, taking on shots I had no business making, and yet sometimes making them. Positioning be damned.
I don’t want to wait. I want to have these moments, electric jolts of living where the past and the future is immaterial and opaque. It’s a flaw, maybe. But it’s how I’m built. And in this life or the next I’d be exactly the same.
Some people just can’t change. Whether it’s nature or stubbornness hardly matters. And so everyone else is forced to orbit around them, challenging or ceding to this immovable force.
Such is the case with Kelly Slater, wildcard at the Fiji Pro, and his fourteenth time as a competitor here.
But why? For what reason is he here, pulling on the vest again? What is there to gain?
Maybe he’s simply fleeing the duties of new fatherhood and needs a break. But then, why not just go surfing elsewhere? You know, for fun.
Kelly Slater must have umpteen other places around the globe he could have a holiday, surfing fun, quiet waves with friends.
But instead we are once again locked into this public and performative death spiral, where everyone in Slater’s orbit (and that means absolutely everyone involved with the Fiji Pro) must go through this GOAT charade time and time again.
We are presented with screen graphics of career stats. We must once again watch clips of past performances, when he was in his pomp. We must endure the commentators telling us once again of his magnificence, how no-one wants to face him, not here, not anywhere. How his career stats are “crazy”, just crazy. They never seem to become anything more or less than crazy.
Even Yago Dora, after beating Kelly in the elimination round, is forced to stand and tell us that he never expected to beat Kelly, that here in Fiji, Kelly is so great. The greatest of all time, in fact. Imagine beating the GOAT, just imagine.
Dora is forced to pretend that this wasn’t an inevitability that we can all see but never admit.
And on one hand he is quite right to pay homage, as all of us should to influential figures. But Slater’s is the funeral procession that never ends. We cannot just sing a few hymns and pay our respects and move on.
Instead we must exhume the remains of the Slater we loved every time he shows up at a competition (which might happen for another ten years or more), and we must chant endlessly the same exhausted platitudes about greatness and crazy, and he will ingloriously exit each contest with a pair of fours, and still no-one will admit that all we are doing is dragging his bald, bloodied, slightly pudgy corpse through the streets.
And we will go on pretending that he is still Kelly Slater in Black and White. Kelly Slater bending every iconic wave to his will. Kelly Slater slapping the water gently and conjuring waves from still oceans. Kelly Slater staring down Andy Irons and saying “I love you, man”, then retreating once more into all his supple, rippling silence.
And we will go on waiting for this to end, but unable to end it ourselves. Because Kelly is still waiting. Even if he’s not quite sure what for anymore.
We will also wait for John Florence to exit competitive surfing once and for all at the end of this season. Perhaps as world champion, perhaps not.
With his victory today he is assured the number one seed at Trestles, though not a title.
And in contrast to Kelly, this is the relationship circling the drain that we are still committed to, and we must recognise that it is us (and by us I do mean the WSL) who have failed John. The Tour will be less without him.
Might we also lose Medina? That would have seemed unfathomable once upon a time. But there is a change in Gabriel Medina that has been discernible all season and is now becoming more pronounced. The dark and furious boy we once knew seems like a distant spectre he is trying hard to flee.
Perhaps he’s personally happier, divorce papers cleared, family reunited, just enjoying his surfing. And we can’t grudge him that. But the mellow, smiling Medina, the one who jokes about his misfortunes in post-heat interviews, is lacking an edge. And that doesn’t make for very good entertainment.
Regardless, Medina has twice won in Fiji, and may do so again. If he does he will earn a top five berth for Trestles. But there is little in his countenance to suggest he really cares, just as there was a surprising lack of rage and vitriol following his Olympic disappointment.
Is it really a decade since Medina’s last win here? Time seems to have spiralled away. Too much waiting.
And yet, as I watched the replays of all the heats this morning from the couch where I had slept, my broodiness was turned on its head by Rio Waida.
After beating Jordy Smith and Matt McGillivray in the opening round, he was effervescent. He spoke of his joy at being in Fiji, the warm water, the sleeping and waking in boardies. Just like home, he said.
I was reminded of lighter days of my own when I had done the same in his homeland, living needing little more than a pair of shorts, a little food, some Bintangs.
Waida said he’d been exhausted after the Olympics, but coming here, for what will be his last event of the season, was nothing but pleasure. He was enjoying his surfing, enjoying his life, and just happy to be part of the story, he said.
Yes, I thought. He’s right.
There’s a man who is not waiting, but just living.
And that’s what we should all endeavour to do.
(Apologies if you came here for a contest report. This is my hangover and I’ll cry if I want to.)
