It's a special gift, intangible, which bridges the gap between adequacy and greatness…

There are some performers, rare as blue butterflies, who carry around their own lightning. It has nothing to do with the sponsor stickers on their boards or how many contests they’ve won or how many times they’ve surfed Pipeline, although all that helps.

When the camera hits them, sock.

Kelly had it and Andy Irons. Medina and Toledo. And this medium-sized boy with “big bones and long muscles”, who turns twenty-one in three days and who has a head of hair that looks like a bale of hay that’s just exploded, named Jack Robinson.

He grew up in Margaret River, still lives there, and is the sort of surfer who will tear any visitor to shreds in a one-on-one heat.

This short film, if it was played to a cinema audience, would be greeted with rapturous applause. It’s the manifesto of a young man, told with authority.

Watch!

Come and see the now-famous "Chickens of the Sea" swell…

Four or five days ago, depending on your time zone, Mavericks shed its autumn coat for a brutal winter swell. Too big, of course, for the Pretty Big-Wave Tour’s contest which was ruled out for “safety reasons.”

In this video, made by Surfer magazine, we see tow and paddle on a day that would’ve made for wonderful viewing, especially as most of the combatants went surfing anyway, including WSL commentator Peter Mel.

From the presser:

Despite the WSL calling off the Mavericks challenge for the week, the most talented big-wave surfers from the Bay Area and around the world still took to the lineup to both paddle and tow into the famed big-wave spot. Kai Lenny continued to push boundaries in big-wave tow-in surfing with his aerial attempts, much like he did after the Jaws Challenge was called-off after being deemed “too dangerous.” Hell, if the WSL calling off a big-wave contest means an inevitable Kai Lenny tow-in exhibition, then who cares if another Big Wave Tour heat ever runs again? As you’ll see in Kyle Buthman’s edit above, yesterday wasn’t just a Lenny show but a day of charging by surfers hellbent on taming the raw Aleutian energy Mavericks threw at them. Featuring: Wilem Banks, Kai Lenny, Anthony Tashnick, Eli Olson, Grant “Twiggy” Baker, Luca Padua, Jamie Mitchell, Tom Lowe, Nathan Florence, Torrey Meister, Nic Von Rupp, Pete Mel, and more.

Best Mav's since 1993!

In this very dark, but compelling, clip, see the German-Portuguese shredder Nikolaus von Rupp get barrelled on the left at Mavericks in northern California.

“I ate shit all week, pulled my vest over 10 times and I was pretty close of calling it off for the lefts,” says Nic. “It’s a real beast that one, she’s got an anger of it’s own. Those 30 minutes where everyone got bombs were magical. Everything clicked and on this wave I almost fell three times, but I wanted to make one so bad that I powered through.