Niccolo Porcella just survived this, while also being responsible for several heart attacks worldwide. All in one wave.
Wow, what a boring week to be a surfer. Absolutely nothing jaw dropping, newsworthy or even interesting happened. Things were so boring around The Inertia office that I actually decided to stop coming in altogether, opting to sit around the house with zero cell service and no access to wifi or social media. That’s how uneventful life was this week. So forgive me if I leave anything out when recapping the things that happened in the most recent seven day span.
Video of the Week:
I may be on this boat alone, pun intended, but I don’t think I am. I think Teahupoo wipeouts get mundane. There, I said it. The wave itself is so freakishly scary to even look at that anytime I see somebody getting crushed under the lip or getting sucked up inside the barrel I just kind of have this ho hum attitude about it. I still cringe, but I also have this inner monologue that plays the words “yeah, no sh**” over and over. What did they expect? They’re surfing the most mutant wave on the planet. For fun. And somehow we’ve come far enough as a species (surfonious erectus) that we’ve made it possible to come out of the spitting side of those barrels in one piece…sometimes. This wave was different though. This wave we could see inside and identify the man in the wash machine, rather than just watching a wall of water and wondering how the tumble must feel.
We can’t even call Niccolo Porcella a “victim” of almighty Chopes. This wasn’t even his last wave of the day, something Porcella said he was stoked about. The guy didn’t just take a beating and live to tell about it. He did it all with a smile. “I hope you all can feel me and get inspired when I say that I believe ‘luck’ most of the time goes to people who do what they love for the right reasons with the respect of what they do,” he said. “I’ve dedicated my life to training hard so I can have the confidence and peace of mind that I deserve in these life experiences, and to enjoy them to the max!”
Props Niccolo. I’ll see you on the red carpet at The Grove next spring. Nobody’s taking the XXL Award from you.
From The Tour:
Ok now I’m interested. I kind of felt like the first few months on tour were snoozers. The Brazilian storm just pounded the field early on and even though Adriano is still atop the Jeep leaderboard he’s barely hanging on at this point. Four of the top five surfers in the standings have never won a title. The one guy in that mix who does have a world title (3) just nearly won JBay and supposedly is really popular (and probably emotional) at the moment. But I forget why. Either way all eyes are going to be on him down the stretch as the likely favorite to come out on top by December. I had thrown in the towel on this season when Adriano de Souza and Felipe Toledo won three of the first four contests this year. That gap has been closed now and it’s anybody’s ballgame. This is fun. This is where it gets good. To Chopes we go!
What’s Blowing My Mind:
Oh ya I heard something about an “aggressive shark encounter.” Now I remember what I was missing this whole time. Oh well, those happen all the time I guess, right? So it’s really no big deal after all.
In all seriousness, I don’t know that anything in surfing will ever shock the world the way Mick Fanning did. It’s the one thing the landlocked “don’t get” about us. They’re fascinated by it. We’re scared to hell of it, so we mostly just pretend it’s a non issue. I get that the guy came out unscathed and that’s amazing in itself. I get that he wouldn’t be fine if that shark had wanted to fight back or intended to do so in the first place. But like I said, the issue has now lost it’s shock value by becoming real on a live broadcast. That’s it. Everybody go home now. My point isn’t to rehash an old story. I get that we’re beating it into the ground. I think the fascinating thing now is to see where the surf world goes after it just reached its pinnacle. Within the community we’ll make advances, there will be news, there will be excitement. But no 100 foot wave or any other possible fiasco will catch the attention of the world at large on the same level again. So what’s next? Reality tv? Wider commercialization? Selling more to a general public? “What’s next” is now the story.
Anyway, like I said it was a really boring week.
