Well, it just wasn’t Jack’s day!
After surfing brilliantly on Day 3 to get past John Florence and cagily on Day 4 to get past team-mate Ethan Ewing, Australia’s last man standing Jack Robinson out-skilled and out-psyched Brazil’s Gabriel Media to reach the gold medal final, but then the tables were turned on him by Tahitian Kauli Vaast who took local knowledge to a new level when he blasted Jack out of the water in the first exchange with a 9.5 points deep barrel, then backed it up with 8.17. Effectively, game over and gold to France, Jack taking silver and Medina bronze.
In the women’s gold final Brazil’s Tatiana Weston-Webb took USA’s Caz Marks to the wire in a scrappy heat but was outclassed by the current WSL world champ, with France’s Joanne Defay taking bronze.
The expectations for the Olympic surfing at Te’ahupoo were so high that we were almost certain to be disappointed. And yet … and yet for eight spellbinding heats on Day 3, it well and truly surpassed them.
If Japan in 2021 had produced a finals day of scintillating performances in challenging beach breaks that set the bar at surfing’s Olympic debut, then that bar was not only bettered but well and truly broken by what we saw at the end of the road on 30 July as a rare and acutely-angled storm swell and a window of favourable winds created a mid-to-large-sized Te’ahupoo like we’ve never seen before for competition. Yes, it’s been ridden bigger in a jersey, but never with fearsome pits rising up from beneath sea level and exploding across the most shallow section of reef, causing insane wipeouts and near-death experiences for surfers caught inside while the water patrol skis tried to reach them.
Fortunately no one was seriously injured, but this was the highest of high drama in surfing competition, and it happened in the Olympics! Some rose to the occasion, others did not.
Perhaps the saddest performance was that of two-times and current WSL professional world champion Filipe Toledo, whose fear of waves of consequence has become such an issue that his appearance for Brazil in the Olympics came in the middle of a self-imposed sabbatical from the world tour after another failure at Pipeline.
Ironically, Toledo appeared to have conquered his demons in the medium-sized waves of the early rounds, but when the swell jacked up and got gnarly, his performance against un-rated Japanese surfer Reo Inaba was tragic to watch. Just as the heat was on countdown to a start, a bomb set rolled through and spat its unridden contents onto the reef. Eight minutes in, Toledo paddled over two medium-sized waves without even thinking about going, while Inaba paddled in and wiped out ferociously.
This may have been the moment when Toledo clocked off. He sat on priority until the heat was almost over, then paddled for his first wave, a patchy insider where he fell and was dragged onto the reef with his broken board. There is some argument about what happened next, but, picked up by the ski, Toledo appeared to jump off it. The official story is that he fell off. Other commentators are adamant he jumped, presumably to stall for time. Professional surfing’s world champion was bundled out with the lowest heat score – 2.46 from two waves – of the round.
There was always a question mark about how Toledo, a small wave master, would perform, but no such doubt over two of the brightest lights on the women’s world tour – our Molly Picklum and USA’s Caitlyn Simmers – who were surprisingly underwhelming in their early round departures, Molly finishing equal last and Caity running up the white flag in round three. They say that making the Olympics can bring a whole new world of pressure into play, and so it appears.
And speaking of pressure, around the edges of this drawn out competition we’ve had normally sane surfers experience slight brain fades. Why else would contender Ethan Ewing pose for social media in a hug with Straddie mates Ben Lowe and Bede Durbidge? Okay, Bede is his coach, fair enough, but Lowey was the only Australian judge on the international panel, which created enough of a suggestion of impropriety for him to be sent home by the ISA.
Meanwhile, Jack Robinson’s special Olympic quiver featured a natty red rising sun across the bottom of each, a nod to the favoured decorative dash of the late Andy Irons, but the South Korean team manager was not amused, citing the design’s association with Japan in World War II, and lodged a protest. It should be noted that South Korea did not play a dominant role in this event, but the red suns had to be painted over.
Aido’s trolley up for grabs
It’s been a couple of months now since our beloved music maestro and surfing buddy “Aido” Spelt paddled off the peak, leaving an empty space in the Tea Tree lineup that will be forever his.
Many of you will remember bumping (sometimes literally) into Aido’s custom-built longboard trolley along the coast track on good days when everyone is in a hurry to get the feet in the wax. Not Aido. Just as he was happy to sit and have a chat and wait for the set of the day, so would he move the trolley to the side of the track and let the rampaging shortboarders pass, greeting many of them by name.
Now that he’s gone the trolley is surplus to needs and the family is letting it go at a very reasonable price. This is not only a piece of Aido memorabilia that deserves to go to a loving home, it is the Rolls Royce of surfboard trolleys – wide, track-gripping wheels on a sturdy aluminium frame, super-light to push or pull.
Make an offer via me at phil@philjarratt.com and I’ll pass it on.
