Surf Simply Podcast27 - WSL Interview & Eddie Aikau
Recorded on Wednesday 2nd March 2016, with Harry Knight, Ru Hill and Asher King.
INTRODUCTION:
The Boys started off talking about Ru and Asher's trips to ski and snowboard in the USA next week.
THE NEWS:
First up in the News this week was the amazing Eddie Aikau Invitational contest that ran last week.
John-John Florence won the event, beating Ross Clark-Jones in the last 10 minutes of his heat. We spoke about the amazing performance from Clyde Aikau, and some of the best rides and best wipeouts.
Next up in the news was Greg Long being crowned the Big Wave World Champion at the closing of the 2015/2016 season. Harry brought up the likelihood of next year maybe being a La Nina year with possibly less big wave events. Ru brought up this article by Beach Grit that covered the various winnings of the Big Wave Athletes.
The last thing we spoke about in the news was the injury list as we go into the 2016 WCT season. Owen Wright, Bede Durbidge and Lakey Peterson have all pulled out of Snapper with injuries, and Mick Fanning has announced that while he will surf Snapper, he won't be surfing the whole season this year. Asher mentioned the video of Lakey getting caught by backwash while training in Ventura, California which you can see below.
INTERVIEW: Dave Prodan, VP of Communications for the WSL
As we go into the 2016 WCT season, we thought it would be cool to talk to the WSL, and we were lucky enough to be able to get Dave Prodan on the show for a chat.
Dave mentioned his early mentor, Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew, who was president of the ASP from 1999-2008. Ru suggested checking out “Bustin' Down The Door” as a good movie to watch to learn a bit more about “Bugs”.
Ru brought up Dirk and Natasha Ziff who were the big names involved with the 2012 takeover of the then ASP, before we then moved onto talking about the different ways to watch the pro tour.
Harry and Dave spoke about various technicalities of judging surfing and referred to the bullet point list that makes up the Judging Criteria. The List is as follows:
- Commitment and degree of difficulty
- Innovative and progressive maneuvers
- Combination of major maneuvers
- Variety of maneuvers
- Speed, power and flow
We spoke about how those bullet points can be re-prioritized for different conditions, and we spoke about Gabriel Medina's air in the semi-final at Pipeline last year
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaUQV5VBeQ0
That lead Asher to bring up the question of equipment in judging, and Dave brought up the Lost movie “5'5 x 19 1/4” mentioned this 2009 heat between Dane Reynolds and Roy Powers in France in which Dane rode a Channel Islands MTF Altered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1M0VO8pETw
SUPERHERO OF SURF: Eddie Aikau (1946-1978)
Our Superhero of Surf this episode is the Hawaiian surfer and lifeguard, Eddie Aikau.
We mentioned earlier the story of Bustin' Down the Door, which Eddie is an important part of, and in talking about that, Harry mentioned the “Drunk History” version of the story.
Asher mentioned the ESPN “30 for 30” documentary about Eddie, which is well worth a watch if you have 30 minutes spare.
WHAT TO WATCH:
Harry started with this clip of waterskiing at Jaws:
Ru brought up this cool little edit by Yeti about the Malloy Brothers:
Harry mentioned the most recent Tour Notes episode that wrapped up the Eddie contest:
And lastly, don't forget to keep an eye on the Men's and Women's contests starting on March 10th.
That's all for this episode folks, email us at podcast@surfsimply.com