"Teahupo’o is very intimidating where Trestles is not."
The Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee’s decision to host the surfing portion of the ’28 Games at Lower Trestles is still reverberating across the surfing world. Tears in Huntington Beach, inward-looking angst in Lemoore and subtle shade being thrown all the way from Australia.
For it was from a vast real-estate empire on the Gold Coast where three-time world champion Mick Fanning opined on the decision to the Olympics official channel, writing:
Trestles is such a high-performance wave where I feel it suits a lot of different styles of surfing. It’s a very playful wave so you can practically do whatever you want on it. It’s the closest thing to a wave pool. A great peak so no one is at a disadvantage and 9/10, the person surfing the best wins the event. Every wave is very similar so it levels the playing field a lot. Japan is a lucky dip and Tahiti was pure barrels. Trestles is turns and aerials. Teahupo’o is very intimidating where Trestles is not. The challenge here is calming your excitement and picking the best waves as they are much easier to surf than the mediocre ones.
Students of surf history immediately detected the “Teahupo’o is a very intimidating wave” as a direct shot at the timid small-wave master Filipe Toledo’s well-documented terror in Tahiti featuring 0.0 heat totals, floating out the back while two elderly men traded magic tubes etc.
These same students, however, were aware of Fanning’s error. Toledo, of course, vanquished his demons with the single greatest moment in surf history after scoring a 9.67 in his heat.
WOW.
Back to Lowers being compared to a wave pool, though. Is that a good thing?
More as the story devleops.
Never really understood the draw to those reef sandals that minted him. Like if I grabbed a beer and my buddy goes hey bro…hand that here I’ll open it for you…. and takes off his nasty ass sandle I would just tell him I’m good and use my teeth.
Where’s the live thread?
Same problems with Rincon as consistency.
Greenland must have some interesting lineups, especially in summer. It would be a nice gesture to the newest state in the union
JSC is already on the case.
Just curious .When did he turn into such a cunt?
He always seemed ok as a photog and wannabe journo.
Maybe he is just misunderstood?
Ranch is not a feasible location. Way too difficult to access, boat only, as they would NEVER allow access via land. It’s also not the golden wave park people make it out to be, that mostly comes from fools who have never been there or got lucky once. Still needs swell. Not to mention, the best waves aren’t actually in front of the Hollister Ranch property.
They (meaning wozzle and Oly’s) have managed to push Trestles to the point of being cliche. Way too much in the surfing world relying on this wave.
The same arguments for including Bells exist at Lowers. And lowers is a better wave to watch WSL guys. Probably easy to run contests too since it is so consistent.
A WSL event at firing Rincon would be really cool but that would need a long waiting period if you didn’t want 75% of heats to run at a waist high beach break along the 101.
Like a 30-day waiting period to do a WSL event at Rincon, and even then they still might get skunked
Wait til you see Burleigh. There’s a sandbank way out the back that slows the swell up so it doesn’t have the same ‘impact’ on the point. They had a contest there last week that was interesting, mainly because there were 6 people in the water and they were spread out so any meaningful waves were found. (And my local(ish) club won it!)
Having 2 people in the water is going to require some very creative editing to avoid showing the 4 surfable waves per heat being completely missed because the competitors were in a paddle battle up in the cove…
It’s probably firing today at double overhead and glassy, but we’re waiting for Bells…
Rincon is one of the worst places for a contest. Too vast, parking/access sucks, fickle. Still, Trestles is getting old.
a summertime contest at Rincon … lol
if anyone would try to do it, it’d be wozl… or the olys
Thats it in summer unless HB pier or mushy point at Creek gets you going.