A couple of weeks ago, while witnessing the final stages of the WSL Narrabeen Pro at close quarters, I fearlessly predicted that the Brazilian Storm was petering out, even as Gabriel Medina was comprehensively winning the event.
Well, guess I got that wrong. At the time I was specifically referring to cracks in the armour of current world champion Italo Ferreira and to Felipe Toledo’s failure to ignite so far. But after finals day at Margaret River last Monday, you’d have to say that the Brazilians are totally dominant in world professional surfing, with the most audacious surfers prepared to risk all to conquer, and with a team spirit that goes beyond anything we’ve ever seen before, and I’ve been watching and writing about pro surfing since it began.
Of course, we all know that vast numbers of our Brazilian surfing brothers and sisters do not understand the term “take your turn” in English or Portuguese, and at the high performance end, this can be exacerbated by a factor of 10. I know, I’ve surfed with the best and the hungriest in Indo and Hawaii and elsewhere over the years and been wave-starved and frustrated. But I also got to know a few of the first wave Brazzos like Daniel Friedman and Rico de Souza, and later Flavio Padaratz, and found them to be decent human beings despite their desire to ride every wave of every set.
So the Storm continues, with Toledo coming back from a lean stretch to comprehensively dispatch South African Jordie Smith in the men’s final, while in the women’s, Tatiana Weston-Webb (who is kind of a Brazza) taking the title from our own Steph Gilmore. At the conclusion of the Margaret River Pro, the third of four events on the Australian pro tour, Brazil holds three of the top five places on the men’s leaderboard, one on the women’s.
Australia has no one on the men’s top five and two on the women’s – Steph Gilmore at three and Tyler Wright at five. These numbers mean more on this year’s weird Covid-structured tour, particularly when you consider that with only the mystery bag of Rottnest to come in Australia, our surfers would have expected to be leading the pack.
But, like Merewether and Narrabeen before it, Margarets produced some great surf and spectacular performances from rookies and veterans alike. The pro tour is alive and well, we just need to pull our finger out.
Surf art at Civic
I’m not quite sure how it happened, but the Noosa World Surfing Reserve recently found itself chucked in at the deep end when asked to create a surfboard art competition at a moment’s notice.
But since the NWSR was about to launch its Surf Code for schools program at the Noosa Civic, and since Noosa Surf Museum’s Keith Grisman had three boards to donate, we approached principal Richard Wallace at Noosa’s Montessori School, who conferred with art teacher Lucy Yule, and with five days to deadline, four eager artists went to work.
With the loose theme of “express your feelings about the Noosa World Surfing Reserve”, 12-year-old artistic duo Rosita Ortega and Chinta Wallace paid homage to the ubiquitous brush turkey. The girls explained: “The inspiration came from wanting to do something that represented Noosa, and that meant a bush turkey. We both love to surf, so we put him on a wave and came up with ‘Surf Turkey’! But we also wanted the message of behaving well in the surf to come through, so we thought, don’t be a turkey and drop in!”
Lila Tropp, also 12, came up with ‘Night and Day Under the Ocean’, which reflects the peace and calm she feels when surfing Tea Tree Bay with her dad. She adds: “The happy green octopus represents people’s love of the ocean.”
But winning the applause meter on the night was Annie Larwood’s ‘Oceanic Behemoth’, a powerful oceanic imagining taking in everything from Old Testament references to the sea turtles the 14-year-old had seen on a recent trip to Lady Elliot Island. But, Annie was quick to explain, was “not the bloodthirsty, savage kind. Its personality is rather gentle and friendly.”
The Montessori surf art will be on display at the Noosa World Surfing Reserve information marquee during the Noosa Festival of Surfing.
FOOTNOTE: Noosa Festival of Surfing kicks off tomorrow with a huge weekend of surfing and entertainment. Hope to see you all at the opening ceremony tomorrow (Saturday) from 4.30pm, and don’t miss the VetShop surfing dogs. I’m particularly looking forward to catching up with old mate Ray Gleave, the “godfather of soul”, who won the very first Noosa Classic in 1992 and will compete in the same open event at age 62 to celebrate the festival’s 30th birthday.
