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From the outside looking in, it all seems quite perfect.
Really, who doesn’t feel at least a little envious of those competing on the ASP
World Tour? After all, the one thing we prefer to do most, they do best. And
they do it everywhere. Sure, you may be lucky or resourceful enough to one day
find yourself in the lineup at Teahupo’o or J-Bay, Snapper or Pipe. But you
will never surf those spots as well as these guys.
So, like spiteful curs, we bark and bark and bark online, so
quick to demonize our sport’s most elite athletes, calling them everything from
“soulless marketing tools” to “spoiled little bitches” anytime they question
any of the decisions made in their workplace — the hastily tag-lined “Dream
Tour.”
The Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay, the fourth event on this
year’s docket, brought out the worst in blogophiles. A lot of the conjecture
dealt with reigning 10-time ASP World Champ Kelly Slater eschewing a three-foot
flick-a-thon in favor of historically huge Cloudbreak. Plenty of Kelly’s fellow
competitors expressed some resentment.
Julian Wilson: “Don’t say you’re gonna do the World Tour and just not
show up for your heat… a disrespectful thing to do for the guys chasing the
World Title this year…”
Owen Wright: “I think it’s a little bit rude…”
Jadson Andre: “Nobody cares [hee hee],
only Billabong…”
Jordy Smith: “You don’t want to win an event without the best guy there, so
that sucks…”
But Jordy Smith did win the Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay this
year, defending his tear-jerking ‘10 trophy and spicing up the title race: Joel
Parkinson now holds a slim lead over Smith by 950 points while Kelly fell to 6th
and remains the only East Coaster holding top-10 ground. Of course, devout KS
fans had his back in the online swap meets, defending the Champ’s devil-may-care
freesurfing spirit. Ironically, however, a lot of these fans are the same
people who can’t stop whining about wanting Slater protégé Dane Reynolds to don
a WCT singlet again.
So where do we want our favorite athletes: in our face on
Tour, living their dream? Or out of sight off tour, living our dream?
We’ll come back to that. Right now plenty of East Coasters, and
certainly every Gulf Coaster, could give a shit whether Dane rejoins the Tour
or not. We’ll keep buying his movies and subscribing to his blog anyway,
because the guy is that friggin’ raw. And besides, the more Cory Lopez we see
competing, the better. Unfortunately, Dane’s replacement killer was deprogrammed
by Ace Buchan in Round 2, 15.8 – 6.5, while his Eastern countrymen Gabe
Kling and CJ Hobgood were dealt respective death blows by former ratings
frontrunner Adriano de Souza 14.03 – 12.50, and Kieren Perrow, 12.23
– 9.43. Considering the upcoming mid-year cutoff, Cory and Gabe now tread
turbulent water at 29th and 32nd, respectively, while CJ chills at 24th. To his
credit, CJ was strangely upbeat in South Africa, even cracking Honey Badger
jokes with beachside commentator Adam Replogle.
That says a lot, because who’s dying to be in Fiji for a watershed
swell event more than its best surfer ever? Maybe that’s because CJ’s twin
brother, Damien Hobgood (Tavarua’s other best
surfer ever) was faring much better in the comp, ascending to the final day of
competition before falling to eventual back-to-back champ Jordy Smith, 15.10
– 8.94. The result keeps Damo steady and safe at 14th on tour. But the
dizzying mirages of 15-foot Cloudbreak will dance in his head forever.
But before anyone could go on strike, someone said enough is
enough. Just like that, Cloudbreak and Restaurants will return to the Dream
Tour schedule in the way of the Volcom Fiji Pro — all set in Stone for
2012. It is the first time Volcom has sponsored an ASP World Tour event. And it
all happened just as it was supposed to.
It’s a frustrating illusion, I know. Healthy young bucks
partying it up with bathing suit models in idyllic dreamscapes, making visceral
memory the kind of imagery you and I can only access online. How dare these
fortunate sons of bitches complain when they’re forced to work in New York and
San Francisco instead of Java or Spain. Or bouncy, scat-colored South Africa
instead of clean, turquoise South Pacific. How dare these saltwater gypsies complain
when their veteran co-workers take an unannounced vacation while they’re stuck
on the job site! How dare these blessed beach bums complain about anything,
ever, whatsoever, considering their glorious, amphibious existence!
In defense of pro surfers — the real kind, the ones who shoot for the top, not the middle — what
we tend to forget is a lot of these guys’ lives are shit. Not all of them. But
a lot. The perpetually itinerant lifestyle itself makes it nearly impossible to
maintain emotional sanity, much less a wholesome relationship. There’s zero job
security, few retirement options, and whenever these dudes do show up in Hawaii
or Europe or South America or Australia for a tour stop, they’re sharing
lineups with 44 of the best surfers in the world (that means the best paddlers
in the world, too) along with team managers, judges, coaches, photographers,
personalities, and other entourages who are far from kooks themselves. What we
tend to forget is only like four guys will ever truly make a million dollars in
this game, and the taxman is always watching. Not to mention, impending doom splashing
them in the face every time a 14-year-old kid blows his tail — the
head-whip and body jive revealing a perfectly healthy torso and intact hairline
that will look just super in a sponsor’s clothing.
What we tend to forget is that once a professional surfer is finally rendered
obsolete by companies that never really fire anyone; they just sort of stop
sending you checks and Milton you out the door like some sunburned version of Office Space: “We always like to avoid
confrontation whenever possible…” it is very likely that he will be legions
behind his peers: uneducated, inexperienced, old, and alone.
Here’s the kicker: a professional surfer knows all this
going into it. He knows the dark days that await him. And he does it anyway.
That’s how strong the surfing dream is within these guys. To
know what it feels like to emerge from a thunderous Pipeline barrel in a
maelstrom of spit atop a roaring beachfront. To experience the intangible joy
of earning the respect from not only your peers, but from your heroes, as you
actually feel yourself getting better. To revel in the fact that you’re riding
a surfboard exactly the way it’s meant to be ridden.
That is something you and I have never considered committing
ourselves to. And we never will. Not because we’re not talented enough or young
enough (which we’re not), but because it takes a profound sense of detachment
and a razor focus to compromise love, security, and all societal conventions
for the sake of distilling the surfing lifestyle into a single inspirational
ideal.
We should ease up a little on pro surfers. We should not envy them, or
antagonize them. We should empathize with them, and celebrate them.
Because whether they know it or not, they’re doing it for
us.
For full results, photos, and videos, visit www.ASPWorldTour.com
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