Bald-faced.
The champagne on Caitlin Simmers’ World Surf League Championship Tour trophy is now thoroughly dried though the memories of the young Oceanside local ripping through the field still feel fresh. Simmers, 18, came into the 2024 season like a roar after opting to sit 2023 out. An opening victory at Pipeline set the stage for a Lower Trestles ending wherein she hoisted the cup high above her head. The World Surf League quick to anoint her “youngest ever champ.
Except.
She wasn’t.
Longboard champion Joel Tudor took to social media, almost immediately, to set the record straight, penning, “Youngest female world champion in history! 15 yr old Margo Oberg! Winning her first world title in 1968 at domes in Puerto Rico on a Mike Doyle shaped mini model …Margo would go on to win 4 more world titles that spanned from the longboard era into shortboarding making her the 3rd most winning lady champ behind Layne Beachley’s 7 and Steph Gilmore’s 8. Respect to fullness and hope to put some respect on your name and accomplishments! So lame the media today doesn’t do some homework before spitting info that’s not correct.”
The “global home of surfing” remained silent and maybe just an innocent mistake? Maybe not counting the primordial professional surfing stew as “official?”
Well.
Another youngest world champion happened to be working for the World Surf League at the time. One Rachael Tilly won the longboarding tour, then part of the Association of Surfing Professionals which morphed directly into the World Surf League, at 17, after making it her goal to be youngest champ ever when she was 11. Tilly took the issue directly to the League itself and was informed they did not care. That promoting Simmers as youngest ever made for better headlines and no correction or change would be forthcoming.
A wild bit of bald-faced nonsense that goes above and beyond.
This piece of news, which was shared to me by David Lee Scales in our twice weekly chat, took me aback. It’s one thing to be sloppy and silly, quite another to be purposefully deceitful in order to manipulate. His interview with Tilly will be published next week but in the meantime do you have thoughts on the World Surf League’s abject duplicity? Does it take you aback too?
David Lee and I also discussed shamed former CEO Erik Logan being a comedian and the life and death of Westerly Windina on today’s Grit.
Well worth a listen.