35, part 1 – So Good They Named Him Twice

Recorded on Nov 1, 2016 with Harry Knight, Ru Hill, Asher King, Will Forster and Jessie Carnes.

john-john-florence-by-morgan-maassen

Photo by Morgan Maassen

INTRODUCTION:

We’re back!

The team have all been off on travels and adventures. Ru started us off by talking about his trip to the North Shore of Oahu.

The Hawaii crew + Marine behind the camera. Ten points to anyone who identifies the beach?

A photo posted by Will (@willandthewater) on

Asher then spoke about our Surf Simply Satellite Project out in the Mentawai Islands in Indonesia, and his trip to surf G-Land in Java.

Will stopped off in Japan on his way back from the Indonesia trip and enjoyed playing on the Shinkansen “Bullet” Trains.

Harry went to the QED conference in the UK with his Dad and enjoyed lots of geeky talks

And lastly, Jessie went on a surf trip to Ireland for some cold barrels and fresh Guinness.

THE NEWS:

First up in the news this episode is the failing negotiations between Quiksilver and the Akaiu family over the running of the Eddie Akaiu contest, meaning that it looks as though the contest may not take place this winter.

Still in the Big Wave arena, the Titans of Mavericks contest have announced that there will be a female division in this years competition, with a $30,000 prize purse to share between the 6 athletes. That all led Ru to chat about gender equality in sport, and in particular the idea that a simple male-female dividing line might not be the best solution in many situations. He mentioned Australian pro surfer Peter Drouyn and the documentary about his gender reassignment operation. He also spoke about the recent exchange between UFC fighters Ronda Rousey and Fallon Fox, and Rousey’s assertion that Fox retains a significant advantage as a Transgender athlete

Next up was the news that the WSL and the ISA have made their peace, and WSL athletes will now be allowed to compete in ISA events, including the ISA World Games in France next year. Ru re-asserted his dislike for flag waving patriotism, which caused Harry to mention the recent Reath Lectures that were broadcast by the BBC on the topic of “Identity”

CONTEST ROUNDUP: 

We then moved on to a massive round-up of the second half of the WSL world tour, and all the events that have taken place while we’ve been off air.

We mentioned the Men’s contests at Teahupoo, Trestles, France and Portugal, before moving on to talk about John John Florence winning the world title.

We then moved on to talk about the judging controversy that took place at the Trestles event.

Ru mentioned Kelly’s analysis of the event on his instagram feed.

Here's what I think about the heat between @gabrielmedina and @tannergud… Tanner's first wave (8.5) was the best surfed wave of the heat with the most variety and commitment in maneuvers. Gabriel got the better score in the first exchange (8.83) which I thought was incorrect both live and watching replays later. That set a strange tone for the heat. The wave Gab got an 8.3 on should have been easily enough to put him in the lead AT THAT TIME. Tanner had an 8.67 in the middle of the heat that I think was very over scored by more than a point. So when Tanner rode his final wave he should have been in second place needing a mid 8 point ride. And he surfed that wave very well. I feel the judging got lost from the first exchange. By the time Gabby got his good wave (8.3) and didn't receive the score, everyone was confused, myself included. No matter what you think it was a close heat that could have gone either way. I also think most people take easy opportunities to make big deals about things that aren't super important in the scope of their lives. The extent to which people have taken this heat is seriously silly. It was a close heat that could have gone either way. Actually, three of us who go to every event scored it later at home and had Tanner with a slight lead, all things considered. My solution? The judges shouldn't be able to hear the current situation and score accordingly but even with that they are trying to decide who surfed the better heat. We've all had close ones go our way or against us. So there you go. Let the controversy (and blocking) continue! ????????????

A photo posted by Kelly Slater (@kellyslater) on

Harry mentioned the problems of the WSL contract, and the previous incident when Jeremy Flores was fined for criticising the judges, and Ru spoke about the problems of subjective judging.

We then spoke about Kelly Slater’s announcement that he’s going to have one more serious crack at the world title, and that that will be his last year on tour!

On the women’s world tour we spoke about the events at Trestles, Portugal and France and the new world champion, Tyler Wright.

The next events are the Pipe Pro for the Men and the Honolua Pro for the women. We also have the Van’s Triple Crown events coming up and the big push will be to see who qualifies for the 2017 season.

WHAT TO WATCH:

Will was a big fan of Ulualoha by Etienne Aurelius:

Jessie enjoyed Alex Gray’s warm water edit, Sandal Tan:

Asher had two recommendations for you, the first is this Steph Gilmore edit, Tempest:

And the second is “Influent”, a film about Ryan Burch’s asymmetrical experiments, which also caused us to talk about Josh Kerr’s asymmetrical quiver that he used at this years Teahupoo contest.

Harry’s recommendation was the continued release of John-John’s new web series “Twelve” with parts 3 and 4 being released while we were off air. Asher also mentioned the Surfer’s Journal article about him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5LH6f3caUA

That’s all for this episode folks, email us at podcast@surfsimply.com

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