A Week Wrap: Brazil Gets Big, Wavepools Overtake The World, And Florence Re-Tweaks His Knee

Hello, friends. How has your week been? I went to work every day and then went for my first surf in a month yesterday – it’s just as frustrating as I remember. I did however replace a thorough lack of physical activity with a rejuvenation in my love for archival Marine layer clips – I thoroughly recommend Emma Wood Is Killing Me/Sitting Off The Horn – and consuming toxic amounts of red wine. 

I also read about surfing online, mostly by re-scrolling feeds for the last couple of hours. What that means is that I’m thoroughly qualified to write about the world’s most recent events on this here website! Probably not anymore qualified than any surf-interested kid who scraped through year 12 English, but I have a login to this website and they don’t. 

So, without further adieu, here’s what happened in surf for the past seven and something days.

John Florence is injured… again?!

Say it ain’t so. Please. Those of us in Australia there’s no hope of watching the Brazil contest, so some like myself wake up to watch re-caps and read what Mikey C said about it all. This morning however, I was mortified to see footage of John re-tweaking his knee. 

The details are scarce at current, and John was seemingly downplaying it, but it’s worrying nonetheless. John was out for the better part of a year with an MCL injury he incurred last year in Bali, and now he’s retweaked the same knee.

John has a quarterfinal to surf tomorrow, so we’ll all be patiently awaiting (and ready to report) when the news breaks as to whether the re-tweak is serious or not. 

Here’s the footage of the flyaway kickout that sent John in early: 

China has a surfable wavepool, patent pending

And it’s in Puyang, which Jake Howard reported as the Chinese equivalent of Lemoore: in the middle of nowhere, completely lacking surf culture, and have a millionaire dollar water plow at their epicentre. 

Back in January we saw some footage of brown, turgid, Kelly-esque walls being pumped from this same wavepool, and now footage has emerged of a few actually surfing it. In short, the wavepool’s waves kinda mimic NLand (which is mush), is around waist high, and cost a lot of money, which I’m basing on their lack of leftover capital to hire a filmer without early onset Parkinsons. 

It’s called Xing Feng Extreme Sports Center, and will no doubt propel China to Olympic glory as the wave holds an uncanny resemblance to Shiba, Japan. 

In saying those mostly negative things, it does look fun, and is way better than any civilian wavepool we have in Australia right now. Actually, scrap that, the flowrider was kind of fun. 

Oh, while we’re on wavepools, the Occy pool is being re-filled!

Late last year Mike infiltrated the opening test days of Occy’s wave pool in Yeppoon. You remember, the big one that used a plunger. 

Well, after a few days of testing the plunger broke as the engineers tried to crank it up, and we were left imagining what the waves full potential could be. Now the plunger has been fixed, and the pool is currently being filled to prepare for testing ‘Phase 2’. 

The plunger is reportedly stronger than its first incarnation, so hopefully that means that the pool will reach those “eight-feet peaks” we were once allured by. 

And one more thing on pools

An application for regulation change has been submitted in the US surrounding wavepools and it’s being propagated by none other than Kelly Slater Wave Co. The bill seeks to reduce their water quality obligations, as well as reducing the number of people allowed in a pool from 100 down to 40. Read more by clicking the bold subheading. 

Italo Ferreira will win a title one day

Just watch this edit of him in shitty conditions, with an ankle bracing, tearing apart every little section with visceral spirit. 

I never used to like Italo’s surfing, now I’ve just added that prior bias to the list of things that are gravely wrong with me. The bottle-blonde fucker is simply astounding.

Stab High is one week away!

Commentators are announced – Dane Reynolds, Albee Layer, Vaughan Blakey, Todd Richards, Bobby Martinez and Dooma Fahrenfort – most of the surfers have been named, we have a teenage girl division brimming with up and coming punters, and now we’re just tying together loose ends to run our surf contest that’s held mostly in the air.

If you can get to Waco, buy a ticket and watch live, if not, then pay the price of a pint to watch the thing from your computer at home. Get a couple friends, chrome cast it on your TV, and sink beers regardless of the time of day.

It’s unlikely Gabriel Medina will win the title in 2019 

“Every title winner in the past twenty years has placed top three in at least one of the first four events. This year, Medina hasn’t.” Mitchell Shepherd, our premier excel statistician penned last week, and you know what, it’s true. 

Medina always finishes strong, but as Mitch pointed out, a start this poor has never won him, or anyone else, a title in recent memory. 

Of course this is only a little stats based guess, but statistical predictions are often right and at this rate it’s unlikely Medina will win the title in 2019. The positive though is that his betting odds will be on the rise and it’s probably worth throwing at least a $20 on him incase the unexpected happens. 

Former and Vans collaborated

And the outcome, as you would expect, is quite nice. 

A pair of zippered kicks, stylish yet unique slides, a blacked out zip-down tee and a plain-black pair of trunks. They’ll be available in a Vans store from today onwards. 

There’s a longboard event coming to Malibu

When isn’t there a fucking longboard event there? Ashton probably made someone write this. 

And Griffin Colapinto copped an innumerable number of burnings in Brazil

He dropped in on a local, and received an uncountable amount (read: five) in return. 

Did I miss anything from the past week? If so, just post it in the comments, I’ll edit the article and then delete your comment like it never happened.

Thanks for coming.