The Weekly Bugle: A look into the weeds of the surfing week
Female Surf Coaches (or lack thereof), Blake Oakfield, Kelly, the new XXL Awards and the Greatest Desert Swell of All Time.
Where are all the female surf coaches?
The Insta shot of “coaches corner” above in Margaret River is full of some surfing legends, elite coaches and quite a few of my good mates. You’ll notice though there isn’t a female coach among them. The lack of female coaches struck me at the Peniche CT, with all the men, and all the women CT surfers, being coached by dudes. In the rungs below on the Challenger and Qualifying Series, where there are equal numbers of men and women competing, I can’t recall seeing a single female surf coach working with an athlete in the last decade. That’s a pretty wild stat that no other professional sport has. It seems the traditional pathway from pro surfer to coach just doesn’t exist for females. There are some great female surf coaches, many working within the national government frameworks, but none seem to be employed by elite female surfers. Any ideas why this might be?
Blake Oakfield, Champion Surfer
Blake Oakfield, champion surfer, from the Mucca Mad Boys, is the second-best thing that ever happened to surfing. The best thing is his best mate Hunter. On Chris Lilley’s Insta any of the handshake, testicle amputation and dolphin bite skits are hilarious, though this one about his dad's humour hit me closer to the bone.
The Unapologetic Bill Sharp
Tireless bottle-blond jack-of-all-trades from Newport Beach, California,” was Matt Warshaw’s highly accurate opener for the Encyclopedia of Surfing’s bio on Bill Sharp. Sharp was a former Surfing magazine editor in the late 1980s, and the creator of the K2 Big-Wave Challenge. That competition would morph into the XXL Big Wave Awards, which ran for almost 20 years, first under swell.com, then with Billabong’s support and since 2015 under the WSL’s umbrella. Sharp finished his contract with the WSL in 2020 and soon popped up as “The Explainer” on HBO’s 100-Foot Wave series. In August last year, he launched the New Big Wave Challenge (NBWC), a resurrection of the XXL Awards, outside the WSL umbrella. This is an old clip, but sums up Bill’s approach. I have an interview with Bill coming up on the Bugle as the 60-year-old kneelo once again tries to wrestle big wave surfing by the horns.
Kelly Slater Retired
Heard the news? There’s been plenty of outpouring though few as long, in-depth, or entertaining as Paul Evan’s 6,000 word screed on Stab. In an attempt to save myself the 26-minute estimated reading time, I asked for a one-paragraph summary from Evans. This was his response. “Born, surfed, won a few heats, went bald, won a few more, then didn’t, then did again, refused to retire for ages. The end.”
The Best Desert Swell Of All Time: Aka Old Men Shouting At Clouds
25 years on, and I'm still banging on about this Red Bluff desert swell that changed my life. It's behind the Stab paywall (worth the coin for their How Surfers Get Paid series alone), but this is one of my favourite things I've written in ages. Epic images by Scott Bauer Photography and wise words from Dean Dampney, who concludes the piece by saying, “People might call bullshit, but that run of swell was life-changing. Apart from just being a benchmark in terms of the quality and quantity of the swell, it was the earthiness of the experience. It was so stripped back that it became raw and visceral. I don’t think I’ve ever been so integrated with the land and the ocean. It was so impactful, that it helped shape many of my bigger and better decisions later in life.”
