Stab’s 10 Biggest Stories in 2013

We’re, like, right on the cusp of 2014. And a lot happened in 2013. Big waves and quarrels and near-deaths and our sometimes frail, sometimes brotherly industry shaking in the winds of change. Sharks, too, sinking their teeth into too many limbs. There was progression in the act of surfing, like always, except maybe more exciting, and there was also movement within our sport’s governing body, the ASP. Oh, and, there were girls. Beautiful girls.

But what excited you the most? What scooped your clicks? What did you come back to, searching for new story developments or impassioned comment responses?

Stab thought it’d be fitting to wade through the best and most appreciated of stories this year, and pluck the 10 that magnetised the most attention. Below they lie…

1. The 2013 Stab List Rich

Who knew? Who knew that everybody so badly wants to know what professional surfers get paid? Well, maybe this one ain’t so surprising. This piece wasn’t without its hot water, but totally worth it, and if this were another category, this wouldn’t be the biggest deal, right? Unsurprisingly, John John Florence comes out on top. Relive the figures here.

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2. Jamie O’Brien on the Ricardo Dos Santos incident

Jamie O’Brien and Ricardo Dos Santos face each other in Teahupoo trials. A wave is shared, a jersey pulled, a slap dished, followed by a punch. Then, amends made, followed by some poor social media choices. Jamie gave us his side of the story, and a coupla months later was fin-blocked from the Pipe Masters. Of all the media and bullshit that surrounded this story, Jamie’s greatest irritation came from having to watch the final day of Pipe and not be allowed in the mix.

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3. Carlos Burle saves Maya Gabeira’s life, surfs biggest wave ever

Maybe it wasn’t the biggest wave ever. Maybe it was. Maybe Maya should’ve have been surfing on such a day. Maybe she had every right. No matter what side of the fence you sit, no matter who’s drama you swallowed (the Brazilian tow team, Laird Hamilton’s, or whoever else’s), there’s no way you didn’t watch this unfold with great interest, great passion, and during those few seconds of footage when Maya floated faced down in the Nazare shorebreak, great fear.

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4. The Best Gals Club

Perverts! All y’all! We kid. We’re kinky, too. Ain’t a goddamn thing on God’s beautiful green earth wrong with admiring and celebrating a genetically-blessed, for lack of a better term, “good looking human” (thank you Mr Davis and co). We listed some of the more aesthetically-pleasing from the dating list of surfing’s elite. We accompanied with photographs. You couldn’t help but click.

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Photo: Trevor Moran

5. Joel Parkinson shares wave with bodyboarder, is reprimanded 

Well, this was too good to ignore. When some photographs land in the inbox of a digital editor, and those photos depict the reigning world champ in a scuffle with a furious Portuguese bodyboarder (after said world champ drops in on said bodyboarder), it’s hard to grasp what’ll happen once they flood your website. And in true unexpected fashion, Stab‘s comment board was punished by IP addresses (yup, we can track ’em) from the homes of Peniche’s bodyboarding community. What Stab thought was some harmless fun soon became a wild discussion that covered all things from racism, history, war, economics and, had it kept up steam, probs global warming. We do love watching the arrows fly sometimes.

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6. Confirmed – John John Florence signs with Hurley

We alluded to it, you knew it was coming, and we were all waiting for it. Then it happened. Sponsorship shouldn’t mean so much in the big picture of high-performance surfing, but when it comes to the biggest hypebeast of high performance surfing of the moment, everything is the biggest news on the block. John John peeled off O’Neill’s wave and applied Hurley’s )(, and errbody had something to say about it (comments’ve since been wiped from the original post, but you can probs just imagine.)

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7. Please, Let It Stop

Stab wishes this story wasn’t in this list. We wish we hadn’t had to run this story. And mostly, we wish there was no story. A 15-year-old girl gets taken by Great White Shark meters from shore in Reunion Island while snorkelling with her sister. Seriously, please, let it stop.

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8. Two Commentators Walk Into A Club

In the perfectly considered and articulate words of Nelly: It’s getting hot in here. Jake Patterson and Damien Fahrenfort, long time men of microphones at world tour surfing events, walked off the job for alleged questioning of judging and all-round unprofessionalism. And the denizens of the internet were perplexed: There ain’t a whole lot of commentators that are universally approved of, so the duo’s firing was almost… welcomed. But on the other hand, like, fuck authority! How dare the ASP! Or Quiksilver! Or whoever it was! Bring back Snake and Doom!

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9. The Gods Are Happy

We didn’t see this coming, and a delightful surprise it was. Stab presented some lost tapes of Kelly Slater getting buck wild in backstreet Indonesia. Never, ever, underestimate the heft this man wields, even in the age of disposable surf porn and to-the-second live feeds. Footage like this has become too rare when it comes to Kelly, and a few minutes of Florida’s finest without a jersey was welcomed with high spirits. Of course, ironically, Kelly don’t push himself as much during freesurfs since he doesn’t bounce back from injury like he once did (his sentiment, not ours), and if anyone rises to the performance limit under the watchful eyes of a judging panel, it’s The Champ.

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10. Fly Me To The Moon: The Race For The 720 

Wipe the short-lived blush from our faces, because the true traffic-driver and magnetiser here is the concept of 720s making their way into everyday vocabs. What follower of progressive surfing doesn’t wanna see that? Throw the opinions of the sport’s most prog in there and it’s a good way to stir commentary, even if some of them are: “Who even fucken cares? Just go surfing.”