Toledo now faces the unthinkable, requiring good
results in real ocean waves that may be large.
“Look at this incredible facility,” chirruped Joe
Turpel. “Look how far we’ve come.”
A drone hummed through the Arabian sky. It conveyed a streak of
gleaming blue and astroturf green smeared amidst flat, arid
sandscape.
On the horizon, buildings with indeterminable purpose gleamed
like sentries.
Minitrue. Miniluv. Minipax. Miniplenty.
It was a phallic skyline. One building is an inexplicable red in
the low desert sun. Sex toys for androids.
There is no undulation in this landscape. No geological
processes to shape and carve. There is only the hubristically
straight lines and fantasies of man and machine.
Look how far we’ve gone, Joe, I muttered quietly to myself.
Look how far we’ve gone.
“Bringing this really cool rush of surfing to another part of
the world,” Joe returned.
“It’s always pumping, always perfect,” he continued in wilful
blindness.
But it wasn’t. It was onshore. Man had harnessed waves but been
smote by wind.
Regardless of how you feel about wavepools on a moral or
aesthetic level, you can’t deny a rubbernecking curiosity at the
absurdity of it all.
For all the WSL’s kelp farming, virtue-signaling, mother
naturefelching, sustainable wokeness, here they are, in the Middle
East, eons away from everything that is real, from all that surfing
has been and done.
And everyone capitulates. There are
no Tom Carrolls in 2025.
But it would take some thick moral fibres for surfers to stand
against perfect waves. Regardless of your bent for social justice
or anything else, in the face of perfect waves (offered freely by
your employer, with a side serving of six star hospitality) your
sense of morality would fold like the Burj Khalifa made of
cards.
For the surf fan, there is multi-layered interest in this
competition. Alongside morbid curiosity in the inevitable downfall
of man, one might find interest in how surfers respond to
scrutiny.
In the pool, technical skill and composure is laid bare. There
is nowhere to hide.
What we find, somewhat predictably, is that the field of
watchable competitors is scythed down. Look no further than the
perennial contenders, all victorious in their opening round heats:
Jack Robinson, Ethan Ewing, Filipe Toledo, Yago Dora, Griffin
Colapinto, Italo Ferreira, Jordy Smith.
Really, these contests are a gambler’s dream. (Though not this
one, owing to exclusion from bookmaker of choice.)
But what the competition has lacked so far, aside from the
promised perfect waves, is any discernible tension.
Crowds are non-existent, despite the quite reasonable fees on
Ticketmaster of twenty-five to forty of your Aussie dollars.
Heats took far too long to complete. Many were over with several
waves left to surf, the winner already established.
One left and one right each should be sufficient for a wavepool
competition. Cut the time. Crank the pressure.
Additionally, and somewhat bizarrely, there was no scoreboard on
screen, and therefore no way of knowing what a competitor had
already scored or what he might need unless the pundits told
us.
Judges’ scores appeared from the digital ether fully formed.
There was no waiting for one or two scores to drop. And there was
even less sense than usual that human beings presided over the
process.
It had all the tension of a dressage event. Watery prancings
were punctuated by the occasional misstep, to muted
disappointment.
Despite this, the contrast in approaches of some surfers was
notable.
Italo Ferreira, the would-be world wavepool champ, a man whose
game was built for this, was typically jangling. “I would love to
have a close out on the end,” he chittered in his post-heat
interview. “So I can go a little higher.”
Filipe Toledo, quite understandably, was similarly overjoyed to
be back in his happy place. A safe haven of four-foot mechanical
waves. He was noticeably quicker and more precise than anyone else.
Up, down, up, down. Metronomic. He anatomises waves in pools with
the assuredness of a kestrel dissecting a vole.
By contrast, Jack Robinson approaches the pool with the languid
boredom of man for whom the predictability of waves presents little
challenge. He was like a stud in the Red Light District, perusing
easy game disinterestedly, before capitulating to his primal
instincts and getting stuck in nonetheless.
Some surfers attempted a different visual approach with board
colours, which I thought a savvy move to create separation in the
sameness. Barron Mamiya opted for lurid orange, but this did little
other than clashing with his yellow jersey. Yago Dora chose a flat
blue deck with lime green rails, and had greater success.
In terms of visual appeal, I’d been expecting a little more than
Lemoore, but it was much the same. The night surfing was a cool
gimmick. But it didn’t last long. Eventually I zoned out and went
full meta, thinking about thinking about surfing.
Until I was accosted by Miggy Pupo ripping the bag out of his
lefthander under the lights. Worth watching for his Marzo-esque
nosepick.
Really, the whole thing is about optics. And it’s hard to see
ourselves as others see us.
Banality was momentarily broken, along with Toledo’s fins, in
his round of 16 heat with Kanoa Igarashi. This marquee match up
between two of the most likeable men on Tour had been dominated by
Igarashi from the off, spurred on by the straight-talk of coach
Jake Paterson.
Back against the wall, Toledo narrowed his beady eyes and
attacked the right hander. But something was off. Mistiming his
first couple of turns, he straightened his back and cruised through
the middle section of the wave, before regaining consciousness and
launching a huge alley-oop. But god had not forgiven him for the
lapse. In his next cutback, he ran over a water photographer,
breaking two fins. Whilst the poor lensman tried to crawl through
the wire fence and commit hari kari in front of the wavetrain,
Filipe slapped his board, threw a rash vest and used big sweary
words. Lots of gesturing from hangers on indicated a desire for Pip
to go again, but Renato Hickel deemed the scoring potential at that
stage to have been insufficient. No more gravy for Pip.
Toledo now faces the unthinkable, requiring good results in real
ocean waves that may be large.
My eight year old, completely apathetic to surfing, was
transfixed by the pool.
“Come and see the cool surfing stunts!” he called excitedly
through to his younger brother. He was a slave to the end section.
The predictability of it all captivated him.
“Oh no, not the sea!” he exclaimed in the breaks between heats
as we were shown drone shots of Bells and Peniche.
Oh no. Not the sea.
Look how far we’ve come.
