Eithan Osborne Rips a Pumping Point on the French Riviera

Surfing filmed against an unfamiliar backdrop is 45% more interesting than usual, and more than compensates for lack of wave quality.

Especially when you’ve got a surfer as electrifying as Eithan Osborne lighting up the foreground.

Which is exactly the thought process that led Euro connection Wasted Talent to smuggle Eithan Osborne into the continent this year; a bid for Mediterranean novelty set against the global pandemic.

The Wasted Talent mob are used to playing host to international pros in the autumn and filming the revelry, but COVID put a pin in that, so they hustled Eithan over. Partly because he was the perfect surfer to make wobbly points and rock walls look fun, but also because he has a French passport (along with US and Israeli documentation, respectively).

“This autumn in France was a lackadaisical affair – rain, onshore winds and numerous storms,” says Wasted Talent co-owner Alexei Obolensky. “In the film window every forecast under the sun showed an oversized red blob approaching our shores with accompanying 100km winds.”

Ireland meant two weeks quarantine, it looked too big for northern Spain, every European pro and their dog were in Portugal, so our crew abandoned trying to score quality regular surf and turned their attention to novel ramps and unusual backdrops in the Mediterranean.

The Spanish and Italian Med looked stormy again and plagued by unfavourable winds, so pulling knowledge from any sources they could find (notably Nathan Sadoun, a Marseille local with strong surfing heritage), the gang packed up and pointed their wagons towards the French Riviera, famous for wealth, Cannes, and definitely not surf.

But the first morning proved otherwise. After a long, dull drive (Marseille’s seven hours from Biarritz) our crew awoke to waves peeling along a headland.

“It wasn’t novelty,” Alexi says. “There were properly good, 4ft walls, and Eithan surfed for two hours before he broke his board. Which wasn’t bad going for the med.”

Europe seems a lifetime away now and for the foreseeable, so this one hit us right in the wanderlust. There are probably 200 right points on the east coast of Australia that are better and more consistent than the one featured at 6:55 in the clip up top, but they don’t seem half as appealing currently. Not to mention the sights, sips and smells available aprés-surf on the French Riviera.

We don our hats to the Wasted Talent brethren for their vision, and for making surfing a little less monotonous.