Rolling Retro Surf Day Llandudno (Gallery)
On Saturday the 21st of Jan Kai Linder and his crew from The Good Life organised an excellent day for all at the beach. The theme was retro surfing and the guys from Vudu Surf provided a whole range of retro boards for the day’s contestants to ride on. The idea was to raise funds for the Llandudno Life Saving Club and from what I experienced this was a raging success.
Llandudno beach was packed to the brim and the who’s who of SA surfing popped in to support. Highlights was Potamus the surfing dog who almost ate one of Vudu’s boards (in fact I hope it wasn’t one of their boards) and of course Jordy Smith (leading SA surfer) , Roosta, Chad du Toit and more.
It was hot on the beach, and not just the sun, babes everywhere made for a happy beachbum…
Shoutout to Jacque Smit and John Wilkinson who kept me company.
Props goes to sponsors Vudu Surf, RVCA, Red Bull, theGoodLife, Hurricane, Backsberg, Indo Sole, Wet Sac, Reef Wetsuits, Mrs Palmers and once again to Kai for making this day possible. The best day to kick off a year full of surfing in Cape Town, ever!
theGoodLife video here:
And without further ado, check out the gallery below (there is a second set of photos, link at bottom!):
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De Sousa takes the Rip Curl Pro Portugal
Lets start with Jordy and Trav. They put up a good show and it’s Jordy’s first event back after his rib injury. Unfortunately he’s not in contention anymore for the world title this year, but this will allow for some very entertaining surfing for the rest of the year. Travis actually put up a great fight and looked the better of the South Africans going into round 3, only to be beaten by the in form De Sousa in that round.
De Sousa went on to beat Durbidge (no knockout round), Bourez (quarters) and Durbidge again in the semi’s to line up against Kelly Slater for the final. Kelly beat Alves and Taj Burrow to get to the finals. De Sousa displayed some excellent technical riding to take the title, but Kelly’s edging towards his 11th World title. He only has to make the fourth round in the next event (San Francisco Rip Curl Search event) to take the title, but there are still a few contenders with an outside chance. Chances are slim though…
See the final heat for Portugal below:
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South African Bodyboarding Champs 2011 at Big Bay
The South African Bodyboarding Champs is on at Big Bay this week. Be sure to pop in and support the guys. I’ll be doing limited covering with pics this week when the swell picks up, hopefully Wednesday the 5th of October 2011.
Watch this space for some fun coverage and comment us if you’re keen to contribute.
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Owen Wright needs a pilot’s license
Owen Wright fought hard to win his latest title at the Quiksilver Pro New York 2011. He was on a high after his second against Kelly Slater in Tahiti at Teahupo’o and it looks like he’s not planning on coming down from that high any time soon. You see, Owen has gotten his pilot’s license in being an aerial specialist and this event will go down in the books for being a showcase of just that. See the video below for some ridiculous air time.
It’s not just Wright who claimed outrageous aerials, Kelly Slater gave it horns right up to the final heat, but looked out of sorts with the kind of competition that Owen was throwing his way right from the start of the heat. To top it all off Kelly snapped his board on a lip with two minutes to go and didn’t bother paddling out again as the writing was on a long wall, being carved up by Owen Wright right in front of him. He’s not too bummed though, as he earned just as much as the US Open of Surf at Huntington Beach with a nice $100k cheque in his pocket. Owen earned the biggest cheque in surfing history, a whopping $300k for winning the event.
Kelly’s semifinal heat against Taj Burrow was an excellent contest. Both of them were scoring in the 9′s and Kelly wrapped it up with a perfect 10 for a stupendous air (around 2:30 in the vid above). This heat just went to show that it’s never over until that buzzer goes, especially against Kelly. He’s on a strong path towards an 11th world title, scoring 8,000 points for his second place against Owen’s 10,000 points, but Owen is not far behind at all, with Joel and Jordy trailing not far in their wakes. These guys starting looking like choppers with all their front and back side reverse airs. Best move of the contest was Josh Kerr’s body varial (is that what it’s called?) Watch closely below:
The current top 10 ASP World Rankings:
1. Kelly Slater: 34950
2. Owen Wright: 31900
3. Joel Parkinson: 30200
4. Jordy Smith: 27000
5. Adriano de Sousa: 26750
6. Josh Kerr: 25600
7. Taj Burrow: 25250
8. Mick Fanning: 23000
9. Michel Bourez: 20500
10. Jeremy Florez: 19700
This year seems to be wide open and it’s making for some spectacular viewing pleasure. Long Beach, New York really did bring the goods, and there were crowds aplenty. It was great to see such a good turnout, and also how well the surfers were being looked after by the sponsors (Quiksilver’s competitors area was amazing to see and apparently modelled by the guys who does locker rooms for the NFL!)
Stoked. That’s it!
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Billabong Pro Teahupo’o 2011 Update
I won’t talk too much about this, except say that this is one of the biggest days ever captured at Teahupo’o in Tahiti and as luck would have it right smack bang in the middle of an ASP event with all the cameras rolling. Check out this insane footage! 27 August 2011 will be remembered for a long time…
Plus check out this insane footage from the Phantom Cam in the earlier rounds of Billabong Pro Teahupo’o 2011. Check Adriano de Souza’s wipeout at 2:15, it just shows you with how much speed these guys are racing down the line!
And then as you’ve all probably heard by now, Jordy and Travis surfed against each other only for Jordy to be injured (rib injury from either his board or the reef – he doesn’t know), the heat to be stopped and then restarted with Jordy winning. BUT the call was made for a re-surf of the heat, because it wasn’t supposed to be standard protocol for a heat to be stopped if someone’s injured and Travis took the rematch, putting him through to the quarter finals.
We can’t really complain, a Saffa’s going through, but I damn well hope that we don’t get another Saffa duo match up for the rest of the year as this was two in a row (first in JBay earlier this year).
We wish Jordy a speedy recovery, as he has to be up and surfing at the Quicksilver event in New York by the 5th of September!
A BIG shout out also has to go to Jeremy Flores who scored a perfect 20 (two 10 point rides) in one heat. Some amazing surfing going down at the moment.
[UPDATE]
Congratulations to Kelly Slater (USA) for taking the win over Owen Wright (AUS) in a close fought battle. Kelly put one over Owen on a wave by wave showdown and some excellent tube riding was displayed by both contenders. A big WELL DONE goes to Travis Logie (South Africa) for making the semi finals and making us fellow Saffa’s proud.
For heat reviews on the ‘Heat Analyser’, visit www.billabongpro.com.
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Best ever surfing intro vs Lost Atlas
This still has to be one of the best intros to a surf movie that I have ever seen.
And in other news, I saw the Lost Atlas premier the other night here in South Africa. It had really amazing footage (the most creative cinematography I have seen to date in a surf movie thanks to Kai Neville), but apart from a disguised pop shove-it and a few rodeo flips that was as progressive as it could go (maybe I missed the climax?). PS who’s the little blond chap? He rips!
Now excuse my ignorance and don’t make a mistake, Lost Atlas is thoroughly enjoyable and got a bunch of surfers who attended the premier applause at the end. I particularly liked the scenery of the different countries and surf spots (which was captured honestly and realistically) and Jordy’s ‘stinky breath’ scene.
Surfing is pretty much taking over skate and snowboarding moves. It’s the only natural progression I guess. Now, who out there do you think is the most progressive surfers and give us some video evidence of their moves, would love to see that…
It probably comes down to pulling off these extreme moves in competition, but I love me a free surf…
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