Olympian, Sports Illustrated model and
“body positivity advocate” emerges from mysterious disappearance to
stake claim as world’s best female surfer with game-changing short,
“Portrait of a Woman on Fire!”
By Derek Rielly
Florida surfer Caroline Marks "floats on a spectrum
of reality higher than most of her peers."
The mystery of Caroline Marks’ absence from the first
half of this year’s tour is a composite of sub-plots that
may never be satisfactorily explained.
But, the twenty year old and former rookie of the year didn’t
squander her time away from the contest scene.
The short below was mostly filmed in Sumatra’s Mentawai islands
during the contest window for the G-Land event and demonstrates,
with little doubt, that she floats on a spectrum of reality higher
than most of her peers.
Clips from southern California and Waco round out the
picture.
Essential.
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Kelly Slater reveals full horror of Sunny
Garcia’s suicide attempt in explosive new docuseries, “I found out
this morning they’re going to turn off the machine on Sunny tonight
so he won’t be with us tomorrow.”
By Derek Rielly
“The not knowing is the hardest part. Is he going
to pass away today? Is he going to make it through tonight?”
Real hard to believe its been three years since the
world champ and six-time Triple Crown winner Sunny Garcia was found
near death after a suicide attempt by hanging at his
Oregon home.
The forty nine year old had posted this shortly before he was
found.
Sunny was subsequently put into an induced coma, sent to a
hospital in California for lung surgery before being transported to
a Texas facility to undergo treatment paid for by his wealthy
Harvard-educated girlfriend Lori Park, one of the first software
engineers at Google.
In the third episode of Kelly Slater’s Lost Tapes, an
eleven-part series that follows Slater’s travails on the 2019 tour,
we find the out-of-form champ in Bali where he must process the
terrible news.
“I found out this morning they’re going to turn off the machine
on Sunny tonight so he won’t be with us tomorrow… The not knowing
is the hardest part. Is he going to pass away today? Is he going to
make it through tonight?”
Slater eventually channels the spirit of Sunny into a shock win
over Filipe Toledo who tells Slater after their quarter-final, “You
know you got lucky.”
Slater laughs, “I gotta beat him once in my fucking career.”
Essential.
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A still from episode three, when the pace of
the series picks up a little.
New Kelly Slater docuseries opens rare
window into greatest of all time’s soul as tour shifts to Bells
Beach and historic biggest-swell-ever hits famous wave, “I really
feel so hopeless”
By Derek Rielly
Episode two in 11-part series, redemption of
sorts…
Over the next nine weeks, the 2019 WCT season, as viewed
through the strikingly pretty eyes of a then forty-seven-year-old
Kelly Slater, will unfurl.
Episode one, A New Year, and we find Slater posted up at his
Palm Beach apartment on the Gold Coast, current value around three
mill, as he prepares for the opening event of the season.
A pre-contest session is shown in all its horror, drop-ins,
mistakes, a white-water takeoff any surfer shucked of confidence
will relate to.
“Fuck, sometimes I just don’t have the patience,” he says.
A sharp and candid and surprisingly filmic opening gambit from
creator and long-time Slater collaborator Alek Parker.
In this episode, Kelly, begrudgingly I think it’s fair to
suggest, arrives in the little holiday hamlet of Jan Juc, where he
stays with Quiksilver founder Alan Green and his wife Barb.
This is 2019, the year of the biggest waves at Bells since 1981,
and it’s difficult to say what happens but…y’don’t see Kelly get
near a wave over five foot.
“I’ve never seen Bells that big! It was bigger than ’81 maybe,”
Slater says following footage of him on a head-high fatty.
The episode reflects the often gloomy nature of a Bells
campaign, the electricity only fizzing into life briefly at a
taping of Ain’t That Swell.
Again, as we don’t see Slater on any waves of note, his stunning
performance alongside Jed Smith and Vaughan Blakey is edited of
colour and verve.
Next week, Slater in Bali, y’know, the year he smoked Filipe
Toledo at four-foot Keramas.
I predict a quickening of the heart rate.
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Raw new 11-part Kelly Slater documentary
trumps even Apple TV’s much vaunted series Make Or Break for
breathtaking candour and access, “F*%k! Sometimes i just don’t have
the patience!”
By Derek Rielly
"I'm really frustrated right now."
It would be churlish, I think, to criticise this window
into the last days of a remarkable sportsman’s career.
Kelly Slater: Lost Tapes is an eleven-part series, each episode
twenty minutes long, that follows Slater, then forty-seven, gliding
his Caddie around the 2019 world tour.
A pre-contest session is shown in all its horror, drop-ins,
mistakes, a white-water takeoff any surfer shucked of confidence
will relate to.
“I just had the worst surf in a long time,” he tells a fan on
the beach, “and I’m really frustrated right now.”
The fan asks, “Why are you really frustrated?”
“Why? I couldn’t get a wave.”
A moment later, “Fuck, sometimes I just don’t have the
patience.”
Episode two, Bells.
Essential.
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A ruckus at Teahupoo! @nathanflorence
Only Fans star Nathan Florence releases
stunning POV clips from giant Teahupoo, “The intensity out there
was psycho! For size reference it was 12-to-15 foot with 20-foot
sweeping tow sets!”
By Derek Rielly
The action tugs at your arm so completely you’ll be
jerked into complete attention!
Nathan Florence, one week from turning twenty-eight and
with reddish brown eyes like dried blood, is the most
interesting of the Florence pack, funny, brave, charmingly
kooky.
In this short, which contains Nathan’s POV clips snatched by his
little GoPro camera at big Teahupoo a week or thereabouts ago, the
viewer is gifted the surfer’s view of what it’s like to sit in that
tight line-up, waiting for a wave that could, and would like to,
plunge its stilettos into your face.
Examine the hold-down at 4:23 where Nathan is underwater for
fifteen seconds. Close your eyes. Imagine you’re there. Hold your
breath. It ain’t easy.
“That had me stressing,” says Nathan.
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Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by
@theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros