“It’s Sucking Like Teahupo’o And Running Like Kirra. It’s Fucking Scary Out There.”
Natural Selection Surf enters the chat in Micronesia.
Well.
After months of hype, Natural Selection Surf officially unveiled itself today.
Let’s unpack.
At first, the ‘live’ in this event felt ambiguous. But clarity arrived soon enough. It’s live in the way a museum diorama is alive — carefully arranged, meticulously lit, reality with the edges sanded smooth. But live as in happening now? Quit playing, fool.
The commentary team was unveiled early — Lisa Andersen, Tanner Gudauskas, Barton Lynch. And at the helm, Ed Leigh, a man who could string words together with the precision of a watchmaker, rivalling even the golden-larynxed Paul Evans of Abu Dhabi. Is there some unspoken rule that all inaugural surf events must be narrated by a well-enunciated Englishman? A Pommentator, if you will?
Then came the judges. Brad Gerlach, Ian Crane, Pam Burridge. No spreadsheets, no equations. Just CREDO — Creativity, Risk, Execution, Difficulty, Overall. Five pillars of judgment, but no numbers. Less technical assessment, more overall ‘vibes’.
“This will change surfing,” prophecized Gerr, looking like a man who’d spent years yelling at walls. “I know what it’s like when judges aren’t paying attention. A lot of people do. I don’t care where someone’s from or what their hype is — I just want to see the best. And this is the most natural way to judge.”
“If you respect who’s judging, you respect the decision,” Noah Beschen added. “This system turns it from an argument into a conversation. I don’t know why it hasn’t always been like this.”
“Every event should be peer-judged,” Ian Crane said. “Who the fuck matters, other than surfers?”
Back in the booth, Ed barely blinked. “Wow. Shots fired.”
Barton Lynch, aesthetically cave dwelling, assumed his role as an ancient sage, nodded slowly, and said, “Surfing is an energetic performance. And surfing is connected to that energy.”
The words hovered in the air for a moment.
Then the show rolled on.
We were drip-fed glimpses of what was to come, just as the commentary team was — each slow-motion reveal met with fresh waves of reverence. The footage rolled out in cinematic fashion, heavy on dramatic sound design, and the team devoured it like a pack of starving dogs. Fair enough. The waves did look enormous. Frightening, even. Soli Bailey admitted he was scared. Does Soli get scared?
Then, the format, delivered with a tone like it was the natural next step in our collective surf journey.
- 8 surfers
- 4 rounds
- Overall impressions
- No numerical scores
Round one: 8 surfers
Round two: 6 surfers
Semi-finals: 4 surfers
Final: 2 surfers
Alright. Now that we’ve got that bit of clerical work out of the way — roll the surfing.
Men’s Round One
Session one
It began with a near burial. The first set marched through like an executioner, and all four men — Mikey Feb, Eithan Osborne, Noah Beschen, Kauli Vaast — scrambled for their lives. They survived, barely. But as would soon become evident, survival was not encouraged by the judges.
Noah struck first. Or at least, it seemed that way. Time in the lineup was a fluid thing. Sixty minutes on paper, yet compressed into a relentless, tightly packed highlight reel. No dead air, no awkward silences, but no moments to chew on what had just happened before the next thing was force-fed to us. “Half an hour has passed,” said the commentary team. Only two minutes had ticked by in our reality. Is this the first sporting event to exist outside the laws of physics?
“How would I describe my surfing?” Eithan asked, more to himself than anyone else. “Thoughtless. I want to go as deep as I can, on anything I can.”
The Skinny Meat Head got busy. Or so we assumed — again, the whole time thing. He stitched together a few fittingly meaty tubes. The waves, it must be said, were far from perfect — misshapen, wind-ruffled, lurching at strange angles. There was gold out there, but you had to have the nose to sniff it out.
Mikey Feb took the early lead, not in points, obviously, but in mouth feel. He was everywhere, a ghost haunting the lineup. He took off deeper than anyone, rode more waves, until one — cold and merciless — seemed to open its jaws to swallow him whole. But somehow, he slipped free, leaving the ocean pissed off, like it had been cheated.
“I wasn’t sure if he had the grunt to hang with these guys,” said Barton. “But he’s proving he does.”
Then, suddenly, Eithan woke up, rage ripping through him as he threw himself into a double-section reaper — a wave with more testosterone than a locker room. It was deep, below sea level, the kind of feral that makes you wonder if there’ll be anything left of him afterward. By every law of physics, he should’ve been swallowed whole. But instead, he came shooting out. Best wave of the day, and apparently, of Eithan’s life.
Cameras cut to Eithan, towed behind a jet ski, a grin so wide it could split his face, yelling “Wave of my life! Wave of my life!” with the kind of enthusiasm you’d expect from a chubby kid who just discovered chocolate.
But then, the contest revealed its first obvious flaw. We cut to the judges, out on their rickety little boat, squinting at the horizon like they’re trying to decipher a conspiracy theory. “Did he make that?” asked Crane. “Nah,” came the answer.
The judges hemmed and hawed, and eventually word came back to them that Eithan did, in fact, make it. Perched on a boat with no cameras and no replays, it was impossible for them to see the wave.
“We can’t see from here,” said Nathan Fletcher. “Tell us about Eithan’s wave.”
“It looked like a closeout,” said Noah, rescuing him. “I can’t believe he made it.”
“We all think Eithan won,” Gerr radioed in, sending the word down the line. Next heat.
Session two
Al Cleland, Soli Bailey, Victor Bernardo, and Harry Bryant paddled out for the next heat.
“I surf like a cat on acid,” Al quipped, channeling the ghost of Andy Irons, who Mark Ochillupo once described in the same terms. Considering the WSL’s recent social media post of him puffing on a cigarette and cracking open a Corona post-Abu Dhabi, Al is the closest thing we’ve got to Irons’ raw, indomitable spirit, and it’s nice they’re not shying away from that.
The waves? A strange, compelling mess. All four men threw themselves into them, but found no clear path to redemption.
Was the pre-event hype around the conditions justified?
Difficult to say, really. They weren’t porcelain, that’s for sure — but is that really what we want from a surf contest? As we saw in Abu Dhabi, perfection ain’t everything. We get off on watching surfers tango with conditions that could send them to an early grave — and that’s exactly what we got here.
By the end of the heat, the judges were left to work off memory, tethered to the flaws of human psychology. They pieced together their recollections of the waves, calling on the spirit of CREDO to hand Soli Bailey the win. But, in a proper WSL format? It was hard to imagine him walking away with it.
“The attitude of just going for it is what’s being judged the most,” said Lisa Anderson.
“You win by just taking off on closeouts,” said Soli, after rinsing his arm full of coral heads, blood dripping down his limb. “It’s drawing like Teahupoo and running like Kirra. It’s fucking scary out there.”
Soli goes through to the semis.
Women’s Round One
“Milla Coco Brown. Looks like a Disney princess, but has a mouth like a pirate,” Ed said from the booth, like he was laying the groundwork for fate. And then it hit. Milla, fearless, hurtling into a mythical double-section trench. She emerged, arms outstretched — her reaction the only way to explain what she’d just witnessed, like trying to digest the universe while tripping on mushrooms.
Kirra Pinkerton was there, too, hurling herself over the falls like someone with a death wish. She seemed to be following Soli’s blueprint from the last heat — picking a fight with the wave, over and over, until it finally gave her a way out — a thick barrel that didn’t eat her alive. Milla, though, found another tube to back up her first wave, and the judges decided that was enough.
“Who is this freak? This chick’s gonna take over the world,” came a voice, barely audible through the mic, drifting out from the judges’ dinghy. Milla was sent straight through to the final. The other girls would face off again tomorrow.
Men’s Round Two
Mikey Feb was listed a spry 22 years old, according to the info box before his Rnd 2 session with Noah Beschen and Kauli Vaast. A tech glitch you’d be forgiven for in a truly live broadcast. In reality, he’s 31, with the elasticity of a juvenile octopus.
Mikey continued his tactic from the opening heat — sitting a good 30 yards deeper than his competitors. Despite getting repeatedly clobbered — the second barrel section seemingly impossible to make from his chosen take off spot — he refused to adjust. He was after glory, and he chased it until his board snapped in half. Still, if the judging from the previous heats held any weight, Mikey would be leading this one, thanks to his blatant disregard for his own mortality.
Though the playing field was repeatedly dubbed a reverse Teahupoo, Kauli Vaast — the very man born from the place — stubbornly refused to paddle for a wave. While it was obvious the arena didn’t exactly favour backside surfing, his decision to remain motionless for the 60-minute heat was curious. After all, the proven path to victory here had been made clear: throw yourself over the ledge and see what happens.
Instead, Kauli wrapped up the event with one lonely attempt — probably not the return on investment the organisers had in mind after flying him in on a private jet.
Noah set up deeper down the reef, near the channel, threading through waves that Mikey, farther north, got devoured by.
The judges convened. Tea was drunk, secrets exchanged, and when all was said and done, Noah Beschen was announced victorious. He was headed to the semis with Soli and Eithan. One spot remained.
Victor Bernardo paddled out on an asymmetrical craft for the next heat. At 6’3” (or so claimed Eddy’s Victorian drawl in the booth), Victor should have loomed over Harry and Al Cleland. I suppose Eddy mistook the Brazilian for the other non-white competitor.
Al, meanwhile, grunted his way through a tube with the bone structure of a Norwegian princess, before sinking his teeth into a full-tilt grab rail carve, leaving mouths ajar.
The booth hesitated. “That could have been a good… err, score?”
If there had been an award for sheer lunacy, it would have gone to Harry Bryant. He barely made a wave, but kept the heat alive by gleefully demolishing his own body. “If there was an award for adventurous spirit, it would go to Harry,” Ed quipped, which was a polite way of saying the man was unhinged.
Al, though, was on a tear. By my count, he threaded five of the best waves of the day in rapid succession. Watching the Mexican prince stand tall, back slanted, getting blown from cockeyed tubes, made for the most electric two minutes of the day.
“I wouldn’t even call that a heat,” said Al. “That was one of the craziest freesurfs I’ve ever had.”
He advanced to the final.
Women’s Round Two
“Kirra Pinkerton has an innate craving for waves like this,” Tanner Guadaskas mused. And she wasn’t subtle about it — posted up alone at the top of the reef, miles away of the others, waiting like a rabid sprinter on the blocks. Her first attempt, a near-make through a double section, had the makings of something wonderful — if only she’d found the exit, if only there were scores to chase.
By now, the conditions had peaked — windless, lined up, and littered with unridden behemoths, beautiful but ominous, ghosting through the lineup. Anne Dos Santos came alive as the stakes rose, knifing one, threading another, and meeting her maker on a third — rivalling Haz Bryant for the most fearless and technical goofy of the day. But Kirra was relentless. The judges huddled, whispered, and sent her through to the final.
Glory & Gripes
So, what happens when you rent out Martin Daly, hire a Hollywood-adjacent film crew, send red-letter invites to some very talented surfers, and let them loose somewhere in the Pacific?
You get Natural Selection Surf, a contest that, by its own marketing spiel, is all about man vs. nature. By that measure, they nailed it. Nature came swinging. The conditions were unruly and wind-ridden — waves that would make the average punter weep. Closeouts. Corpse collectors. And if you were lucky, the ride of your pretty little life.
To lay it bare, we turn to Dyl Roberts, Stab’s resident film purse, who understands the scope of treachery better than most, having shot For Whom The Atolls in this very location.
“From a shooting point of view, they did a great job covering it. It’s always crazy windy there, so they got really good boat footage. I don’t know what they were using — some gimbal setup or something — but it must have been expensive. The boat angle is crucial because you need that perspective to really do justice to how thick and slabby the wave is. From land, you’re just too far away. There’s no high vantage point, just a shoreline.
“The drone and water angles were key. The wave looks insane — it comes out of deep water, hits the reef, and turns into this thick, square beast. From land, you just can’t tell. The side-on angle really makes you understand how terrifying it is.
“The wave runs forever down the reef. There’s not really a channel, so there’s no easy spot to shoot from. They did a great job covering it, considering how hard it is to track a wave that just keeps running away from you.”
A visual triumph, no doubt — credit to the Trilogy: New Wave film squad, Eather. But what about the event itself?
Hype is a powerful tool — essential, even — for drawing eyes to a product. But is there a threshold where it tips over, where relentless praise and promises of revolutionising professional surfing start to feel a little self-congratulatory? Where expectation balloons so large that the reality, no matter how impressive, lands with a muffled thud?
To play the cynic — there’s a critical conversation to be had. For one, the whole escapade, including those hired to judge and commentate, seemed a bit unsure of its own identity. Was it a surfing competition, or a defiant rebellion against one?
NST seemed keen to be the antidote, but it was a little unclear on what exactly it was curing. The language, with its ‘non-competition’ mantra, felt more like a watered-down protest than a revolution. Sessions instead of heats, ‘surfing with’ instead of ‘against’— it appeared everyone was getting a gold star, but with just enough swearing to make sure it didn’t feel like summer camp.
That said, NST got a lot more right than wrong. Especially for their first pass. The three hours of condensed competition were filled with stunning moments and some incredible, heart-in-your-throat surfing. They poured serious money into it, roped in some of the best talent, and addressed the usual complaints the WSL can’t seem to shake — endless downtime, too many competitors, and surfing waves that barely have a heartbeat. They took a risk with a fresh, progressive spin on the sport.
For that alone, they’ve earned a quiet, respectful salute.
We’re only half done here. Finals day, airing Feb 20th.
