Gossip Girl: Coconut Water, Beer, and scoring tech!

Some of surfing’s top dogs have dropped big-monied energy drink contracts to take equity in new coconut water brand Villager. Alana Blanchard, Jack Freestone, Nate Tyler, Monyca Eleogram, Keith Malloy, Laura Enever, the Gudauskas brothers, Koa Smith, Taj Burrow, Taylor Knox and others join skaters P-Rod, Eric Koston, Andrew Reynolds and more in the new enterprise, with those who were in a position to do so departing from their respective energy drink teams and taking a healthier route. The company will make various flavours of coconut water (including chocolate!), and launches US spring 2016. This morning a clip dropped on the Villager site, which you can watch above.

Photo: ASP/Kirstin Scholtz.

As of the Quiksilver Pro, Gold Coast, Corona returns to its rightful home as official beer of the WSL in 2016. Few beers are more intrinsically linked with surfing as Corona, and the brand will focus on Snapper, being that it’s the first event of the season, before riding shotgun around the 2016 World Tour. While the whole Bells event site is licensed and will kinda be one big party, Snapper will be more experiential – word is that Corona want to go deeper than just competitive surfing, so they’ll have a glass wall shaping bay on site. The shapers will be Neal Purchase Jnr, Joel Fitz, and Eden Saul, all three of whom they have long standing relationships with. And, at selected pubs and bottle shops there are Corona x WSL towels and hats up for grabs when you purchase Corona. Take it!

In more WSL partnership news, Stab has heard that Trace and the WSL are working towards a potential deal which’d see Trace in every board on the tour. This is an exciting prospect. Arguments about whether surfing should be contested at all aside, if you’re gonna do it, do it right: The presence of Trace could introduce science and real, measurable metrics to the scoring, like speed off the bottom, percentage of rail in the water, and way more. Anything that minimises the subjectivity of judging is a good thing.

WSL/Freesurf/PhotoKeoki

Stab also heard a rumour that an ex-World Tour surfer made $20k+ betting on John John Florence to win the Eddie. Stab hears that one savvy gent fluttered big on John (who was paying $7 and went even bigger at Waimea), and scooped a good ticket. Who? We have no idea. But, bravo.

Oh, and speaking of betting, assume nothing in the lead up to the Oi Rio Pro. Stab hears the Brazilian World Tour event could be very light-on when it comes to veteran World Tour surfers this year. Everyone’s currently planning their year and Rio seems to be high on the list of places to avoid. Why? Mostly because of the water quality. Mick Fanning was particularly outspoken about the sickening water at last year’s event, so it isn’t hard to assume his absence from the 2016 event during his “personal year”. Stab guesses that many others will cite health and safety concerns over water quality to avoid a non-appearance fine from the WSL, but realistically… they just don’t wanna go.

xoxo, Gossip Girl.