The action pivots on just-turned-thirty Jordy
returning to South Africa for contest, to see pappy G and for
eminently inviting free surfs…
Did you know that when he was sixteen years old, Jordy
Smith was stabbed in a Durban robbery? Who even knew
bad things could happen in that Mandela-era utopia?
Jordy, who turned thirty on February 11 and one day before Kelly
turned forty six, explains: “I was walking home I got mugged and
stabbed on my right side at the bottom of the kidney. They rattled
my pockets, put a gun to my head and that was it. They just
thought, this is a kid, that was it. It happened so fast. I was
bleeding as I got up. I was crying at the same time, ran and went
to the hospital and got stitched up.”
“I didn’t feel it. It didn’t go too deep. Sliced more than deep.
It was a burning pain. I got such an adrenalin hit and then I
started running and as I was running I felt my side and I realised
what had happened.”
Didn’t they ask first before sticking the knife in?
“They don’t ask, hey. They stuck the knife in and took. It’s not
like, ‘Hey can I have your money?’ It’s more so, ‘Get on the
fucking floor, we’re robbing you.’”
And what does it feel like to be stabbed?
“I didn’t feel it. It didn’t go too deep. Sliced more than deep.
It was a burning pain. I got such an adrenalin hit and then I
started running and as I was running I felt my side and I realised
what had happened.”
Does the spectre of death scare Jordy?
“I’m not afraid of death but it’s crosses your mind, like, ‘Oh
my god, there’s a gun and if he pulls the trigger I’m dead.’ To be
in a situation like that, you don’t think about the physical act of
dying, you think about how you’re not going to live and you’re not
going to see your family.”
In this extended but not full-length edit (six minutes), we
follow Jordy in his freesurfs around the Jeffreys Bay contest. His
shaper pappy Graeme inspects his boards, we’re reminded about the
many flashy sharks there and Jordy, of course, gives us the
spectacle of his unflinching approach to surfing.
