Quiksilver Pro 2012 The Outsider: Masculin, feminin

In: Quiksilver Pro 2012 by Steve Shearer 28 Comments Mon 5th Mar '12

Tags: adriano de souza , steph gilmore , laura enever , Taj Burrow

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect-like creature".
Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis.

The day dawned with a pale yellow glow in the east beneath a towering bank of cumulus cloud. There was no sound of sirens or hooters, just raucous flocks of lorikeets scudding over the broken glass and blood-stained concrete of another street-fighting night in the ghetto-empire of the Cooly-gatta.

All over the Gold Coast, crammed into apartments, five and ten to a room, in houses and rambling wooden shacks, they were rising and preparing to celebrate the day. While gimlet-eyed ideologues hunched over keyboards prepared to launch a reign of terror to excoriate the enemies of the revolution, these people of the nation state of Brazil were oiled up and ready to jiggle their globes in the service of Sport. And they turned up en masse, conservative estimates put the crowd at greater than 75% Brazilian.

They spoke excitedly on the beaches in groups of three or four and texted and photographed each other to show the world that they were living the dream on the mythical Gold Coast. Their man, Minierinho, Adriano De Souza, a midget of a man unafraid to confront Kelly Slater on his own turf, to weep in public and claim each ride as if was the pinnacle of his career, well this man was wiping the floor with the scowling giant Owen Wright. He outsurfed him. He went bigger, harder and more radical on every ride. His force majeure was the massive opening tail-high finner off a deep squared off bottom turn. Despite this we still don't place his surfing amongst the divine elite, it remains too forced for late-Western eyes and we decadent late Westerners with all our attendant arrogance find his rapturous ardours of victory and destruction of his opponents somehow unsanitary. It offends our sense of taste. Our sense of propriety.

But not our Brazilian friends on the beach. They unite with his passion. They transcend their individual selves and find themselves a throbbing mass organism of pleasure and pain, acutely tuned to the vagaries of the surfer they now live vicariously through. They become a tuning fork quivering and vibrating in ecstasy with every high risk manoeuvre, which strikes them on a deep emotional level and to which they respond without any inhibition. The Brazilian crowd in full flight is a wonderful spectacle to witness.

Kelly looked sluggish and a tad old skool in his heat against Kerrzy. The straight out thruster set-up lacked the zing offered by the five finner. Kerr just went and nailed a couple of big airs and took him down. In frustration as the hooter sounded Slater laid down the turn of the tournament, a searing full rail carve where pointscoring would have dictated some kind of off the lip.
"Why didn't you ride the five fin?" I asked him, "it looked so much better than that thruster when you rode it last."
He looked momentarily confused, "Did I ride it this contest?"
"Yeah, you rode it halfway through the Round 4 heat, it had a heap more zap and zing through the dead sections."
He shrugged. "I dunno. I rode it at D'Bah last night and it felt weird."

Everything was weird. Telling the champ his board was a pup just seemed part of the mechanics, a sheet anchor for all who were drowning in the molten commerce and sweat drenched madness of a Final Day that seemed to be limping towards a conclusion.

Jordy put his foot on the throat of Parko after the opening exchanges and by midway Parko was floating on his side, slowly finning into oblivion while Jordy's Dad stalked the contest area with flared nostrils. Taj just looked faster, whippier and flared out while Ace's hunched over backhand now looked forlorn and limited in comparison.

I'd been trying to get a handle on the women's comp all week, struck by this curious dichotomy of the young sexy things being used to market to pre-teens and attract stares from middle-aged men and the more athletic and chunky 'real' surfers. I had Laura Enever tagged as a poster child for the young and sexy brigade but after seeing her run through the event I was forced to re-examine the validity of my hypothesis.

In person she's tiny, with matchstick thin legs and a slender frame but she puts her board on rail and throws plenty of heat at the lip. Maybe a half step back from Carissa and Tyler in power and lacking the classic stylings of Gilmore but she seems advanced of all those women in terms of rat cunning and hard scrapping to keep herself in a heat and finding a way to win it. Her exchanges with Tyler Wright in the dying stages of the heat were the stuff of great comebacks.

I asked her if considering the level of women's surfing and the fact companies were making so much money off women's surf clothes that it was disappointing their tour seemed so token.
"I think after last year everyone thought that because we put on such an incredible show and women's surfing was at its highest level ever we were gunna get way more sponsor opportunities for events, and it just didn't really happen. Everyone was like 'whoa, what do we have to do?' I mean, we have six events now and we'd really like to see events at classic waves. We have a couple events...umm...we'd rather have quality over quantity and have prestigious events. Hopefully companies will realise this and step up from outside [the industry]."
"Do you think women's surfing is getting a fair shake in the surf media?"
"I think we're getting a lot of media attention outside the surfing world which is really cool but I'd love to see it get more attention in the surfing world because we are in this world."
"Do you think women are selling themselves short by presenting themselves as bikini models instead of surfing athletes?"
"I think it's important for everyone to know that we are athletes. What we're doing is pretty crazy and I think people may underestimate that because they only see us in small waves or whatever. I love for companies to see the balance between, I mean, we are beautiful lifestyle women but we are athletes as well. We have that balance. It'd be nice for everyone to realise that and get some more support."

Women's surfing apparel remains one of the few cash cows for the surfing industry. Yet it remains a tawdry second cousin to mens surfing. It needs a strong spokesperson to lift it out of cheap sexist marketing and into the modern world. Steph Gilmore seems tailor-made for the role. She looked undeniably smooth and dominant, as she has all event, to take out our proto-feminist Laura Enever in the Final. Well played ladies, it was fine to watch.

The semis were turgid affairs, as quickly forgotten as they occurred. De Souza and Taj, the two jockeys of the tournament, were obviously favoured by genetics (Jordy looked so cumbersome in the dribbly peelers compared to Taj) and there was feeling amongst the assembled hacks that the whole thing should be put out of it's misery as quickly as possible.

But something did happen during the Final. Something unexpected, from this quarter at least. The crowd surged and became animated as if some invisible electric current was now running through them. The surf, which had been sleepy gurgle most of the day seemed to arise a few notches from that moribund torpor and offer some fun ramps.
I found myself in the pinnacle of the inner sanctum as the siren sounded, man on man with Old Baldy, who had responded to an interview request in the minutes before the final sounded. In the ruthlessly enforced apartheid status system of a surf contest it was surreal to go from sweating peasant into the cool, Corona-filled tent overlooking the crowd and surf-break.

Slater spoke of many things: of China and the industry; wavepools; Andy's legacy; drug testing; and the future and meaning of Pro Surfing. But that is a story for a different time.

The Final was electric. De Souza surged early with a huge tail high air reverse on the opening manoeuvre of the opening wave. The crowd screamed. "Fuck, that was good," I said.
Slater shrugged, "He got the job done," then bent down to pat his small sausage dog who was eagerly awaiting the attention of his master.
"Left-handed compliment," I said.
He shrugged again. Even in defeat and out of the competition he was trying psychic juju on his opponent.

Taj looked razor sharp and the crowd in the competitors tent was overwhelmingly in his corner. It looked tight, real tight.

Did he win?

From my perspective Adriano's opening wave was under-cooked and Taj's 9+ ride over-cooked. The spread seemed distorted, not that it was possible to determine that at the time. That was gut feeling. It looked like DeSouza had been the slightly better surfer. But in the end, and that is all that matters, it was Taj who bathed in the adoration of the fans and the crowd were left to ponder the peculiarities of a subjective judging system.

I took my leave from the rarefied air of Slater and the competitors tent, scurried back into the backstreets to find my van unmolested and drove home in a mist of warm rain. The cows were in the front paddock, chewing contentedly in the noble bliss of their ignorance.

I sat and nursed a beer, trying to find that peace of mind while the roar of the crowd hummed and crashed like a thousand mental aftershocks in my mind.

Loading Comments