An OK Day In Hossegor Is Better Than A Great Day At The Office
Day 3 of the Quiksilver Festival presented by Swatch: twin fins, tiny lefts, big performances.
After Day Two’s beach party, the Quiksilver Festival presented by Swatch went on hold again.
This time the rain wasn’t the culprit. The problem was a lack of kJs in the ocean. The difference between the lake that laps at Hossegor’s center and the Atlantic itself was, at best, marginal.
Brendan Buckley told me if I didn’t go surf I’d probably lose my job. So I suited up without looking, ran up the dune as if Rob Rowland-Smith were shouting in one ear and Big Dick Power Surfer in the other, only to find ankle slappers already under the control of the super groms who had owned the previous day’s expression session.
Just as my feet touched water, I saw a very young girl with platinum-blonde hair paddling into a little closeout. ‘Yeah, right,’ I thought. She’d never make it past the first section. Not only did she, she surfed the rest of the wave as if it were a roping left point — style, flow, her own power, because the wave had none — right through to a clean end-section finish. I should drop her name here so no one is surprised in the near future: Raipoe Chapelier.
With little to say about the surf these past couple of days, most of the action has been on land. Snapt5 premiered to a wide-eyed, open-mouthed crowd. Quiksilver literally took over town, closing streets to traffic for a skate jam and concerts, somehow assembling the entire Quik A team — past, present, future — for a meet-and-greet at their flagship store. Across the roundabout, at the no-less-iconic Café de Paris, beer towers kept disappearing until the stock was finally exhausted.
Last night, Swatch hosted a more discreet gathering to welcome their new signing, whose name rhymes with dewy lawn, before everyone moved on to Capbreton for something less discreet and much louder at the local Boardriders store, so far taking pole position in the event-adjacent party of the year.
By sheer luck, the swell lagged this morning and competition was postponed until after lunch.
As Round 3 began there were no casualties from last night, and the festival looked set to deliver what promised to be three consecutive days of actual surfing. Today’s theme, or limitation, was that surfers were obliged to ride twin fins, which most did if we’re counting 2+1s.
While the swell was slowly building, conditions remained tricky, with a bit of onshore making sections crumble. That didn’t stop Griffin Colapinto and Joan Duru from claiming co-ownership of the first heat of the round. Colapinto looked sharp on the diminutive lefts, but it was Duru who raised the bar with a 7.93 on a day when 7.93s weren’t really on offer.
Kai Lenny could probably do the QS and CS (and qualify) if he wanted to. He milked the tiny lefts for all they were worth with an endless supply of windshield wipers. On his backhand, and occasionally switch.
Al Cleland, on zero hours of sleep, managed not only to win his heat but also to serve as hype man for the rest of the Quik team. Vahine Fierro was only 0.23 points away from taking his lead. After destroying the zippy rights on the first couple of days, she put on quite a performance on the lefts over her twin rudders, proving that her skillset stretches far beyond being a tube savant.
There were entertaining exchanges between Hughie Vaughan, Conner Coffin, Luís Perloiro, and Kanoa Igarashi. Each took turns, each trying to find scoring potential in the few sections that escaped being engulfed by the high tide.
Local Thomas Durbidgeierre pulled some of the loudest decibels from the crowd in the afternoon, White Fiji-ing a left all the way to the sand for an 8.07.
Mikey Wright forfeited his spot to 12-year-old Rocco Rigliaco, the Italian supergrom coming fresh off a win at Aritz Araburu’s SHELTER 4teens event in Zarautz a few days ago. Having spent a few hours in the water earlier in the morning he didn’t seem the least bit fazed by his competition that included former World #1 Matt Wilkinson, whose best wave came just after the horn and kept getting better until sealing it with a stylish finish on the end section. “Don’t give me another section,” he said was what went through his mind at the time.
The surf was disappointing, but the beach was anything but. Does anyone even really work anymore?
Allez. Tonight, (another) Quiksilver Festival Official Party takes place at Place des Landais, and tomorrow we do it again but with better conditions in the forecast.
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