Watch: “Like queers around a rich old widow!”

A highlight reel from the Red Bull Airborne Bali…

Yesterday, if you missed it, Jack Freestone won the second (of three) Red Bull air series events. This one was a sideshow to the rapidly-being-forgotten-it’s-still-on CT event.

That’s the thing with these damn fixed contest dates, and waiting periods, and having to squeeze three contests into a couple of days of swell.

The sporadic nature of it all means that if the push notification don’t come through your phone, you could be buried in work (me), watching a kid’s cross-country race (Longtom) or piloting your vehicle around LA (Chas) oblivious to haunches being flexed and waves cuffed.

This three-minute package of the air event at Bali ain’t gonna take your breath away or put a bead on your hairline.

But if you’ve already made love today and you’re tired of Instagram and how-to videos on YouTube, it’s good enough.

Red Bull Airborne Bali Final Results:
1 – Jack Freestone (AUS) 5.93
2 – Kalani David (HAW) 5.63
3 – Eli Hanneman (HAW) 4.47
4 – Ian Crane (USA) 1.00
5 – Eric Geiselman (USA) 0.00
5 – Mason Ho (HAW) 0.00

 

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Watch: Luke Davis in “Pretty Girls Have Problems too!”

"I'm pretty but I'm not a pretty girl," says Kolohe Andino's former San Clemente sparring partner Luke Davis.

Luke Davis is a name that’s partly familiar, if you like your pixies with suntans and glowering stares.

Davis, who is twenty-six, comes from the same San Clemente hot-house as Kolohe Andino, Ian Crane, Tanner Rozunko and Jeremy Carter, although his career trajectory has tended less towards accumulating tour points and more to “flexing” in VIP areas in LA nightclubs.

(Davis now lives in Mar Vista, westside LA.)

This clip, shot a few weeks ago in Bali and post-foot surgery, has a vibration that makes y’want to stick yourself in the water.

No, little Luke ain’t Italo, but the waves are pretty and the music sings, I think.

I asked Luke,

What can you give me?

I’m not sure what I have to give you. My soul? 

Does it hurt to be pretty?

Sometimes.

Do you know who your real friends are?

I have a pretty good idea at this point. 

Do you care what people think of you?

I stopped caring what people thought of me before I turned twenty-one. Maybe younger. I care what my friends think of me as a man but I don’t care about it otherwise.

Do you cheer Brother (Kolohe) via WSL webcast or do you wish bad things to happen?

Yes, I cheer him on. He’s family. I basically live at his house when I’m in SC.

Do you remember when American surfers were number one?

When did Kelly win his last title? (2011.)

What do you see when you watch yourself surfing?

I feel like my style is pretty decent and I’m not very good at airs. Which makes sense ’cause I never really try them. I’d rather get barrelled. 

Why do you like barrels over airs?

Getting barrelled is the best thing on earth, in my opinion. 

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Watch: Matadors make their kills in outrageous Central American beachbreaks!

This is hard shit!

You ain’t alone if you revel in the artistry and pomp of abrupt beachbreaks, like those featured in this excellent short from O’Neill.

In Paradise Lost, part of a series of strike missions around the world, Eli Olsen, Timothy Reyes and Ian Crane meet a swell hitting ‘The Bull’s Mouth’ on Panama’s Caribbean coast.

It is here, where beachbreaks crack like thunder on shallow sandbanks, the trio demonstrate often otherworldly skills at getting under the throwing lips to examine the waves’ interior decoration.

It is a pleasing five or so minutes and proof, I suppose, that not every clip has to have John John Florence or Italo Ferriera to pique your interest.

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Question: Could a 12-year-old boy win a Women’s WCT event?

Whom among the top 18 women could stop little Jackie Doz in a pool contest?

Ain’t a bigger fan of women’s pro surfing than your ol pal DR. I could watch Steph’s swoops, Caroline’s fin-throws and Carissa’s intricate architecture all day long.

But, what has always struck me, and it’s what I tell girls with coaches, no one can do airs with any regularity or style.

Learn to fly and the tour’s yours.

Example:

Carissa almost got move of the year in 2018 with a stuck-in-the-lip-ass-scratching-the-deck frontside reverse. 

Yet little boys have got 540s on tap before their Bar Mitzvah or Holy Confirmation.

I’ve never seen it better realised than this three-minute cut of Jackie Dorian, who is twelve and the son of the former movie star and pro surfer Shane Dorian, and whom we find here howling at the Waco moon.

It’s pure poetry.

Now.

Put Jackie and a top five gal in the pool.

Best air wins.

Who’s got it?

And, is it sexist and brutish to ask?

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Watch: How an Australian teen snatched the biggest bone at Teahupoo!

Leroy Bellet and the story behind his Michel Bourez-at-Teahupoo treasure…

For the past four years, a teenager from country Australia, Leroy Bellet, has been shooting some of the best POV shots in the world.

(Anthony Walsh ain’t bad, either.)

Bellet, who was eighteen when this shot was taken in 2017 (yeah, the wheels move slow), has been chasing the monkey-on-the-back angle ever since he saw the French ex-pro Laurent Pujol doin’ it back in 2013.

Pujol’s idea was this: Imagine a GoPro photo but captured with a high-end Nikon D3 riveted to the fine glass of a 16mm prime lens. But mounting big cameras on helmets and boards, while theoretically possible, is expensive and clunky.

So Laurent figured he’d try a more direct and primitive route. He’d step off into tubes behind the surfer and while they rode the tube, he’d do the same, only deeper, and holding a camera.

“I saw this photo Mark Healey took at Pipe with his GoPro in his mouth and he came in and showed me the picture,” Pujol told me back in 2013. ” And even though it was soft (out of focus) and it wasn’t, like, the perfect shot, you could see the colours, the surfer from behind and I just went, wow, that’s fucking crazy. That’s what I want to do. But I want to figure out how to catch a wave with a (Nikon) D3 in my hand not a GoPro.”

The results were pretty wild.

Pujol’s dream was to get a couple of frames of Bruce Irons or Nathan Florence at Teahupoo but, as he said at the time, “I’m not going to kill myself for nothing. I’m not going to do it for a double-page spread.”

Bellet, on the other hand…

Watch.

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