The Weekly Surf Bugle: Into the weeds of the surfing week
Baby races, Fisher, frontfoot leggy wearers, wedges, eight-wave sets and Freddie Meadows.
Fisher, Halftime Entertainment and Baby Races
Are you old enough to remember the sprint races as halftime entertainment in the rugby league and soccer? As a grom, watching KB United (Newcastle’s soccer team named after a KB, a brand of beer) the hundred-yard dash at halftime was often the highlight of the day. Later in the NRL they’d gather the fastest first-graders (spindly, blonde wingers usually) and set ‘em off for a prize. In the UK, the Rumblelows Sprint Challenge gathered the speediest players from all the league clubs (in football boots and their full club kit) to sprint for the right to call themselves the game’s fastest, to win 10K…. and a new telly.
The point? Well, it’s been good to see surfing bringing back some proper half-time entertainment at the CS event at Snapper. The World Champions Heritage heat was a compelling success, backed by a raucous crowd. And if it aint broke, they did another one with added many of the same surfers (Kelly, Mick, Steph et all) but just added DJ Fisher. In a later post, we’ll get to how Fisher went from being a washed-up ex-pro interviewing surfers with a dildo-shaped microphone to the world’s biggest DJ. But basically all this fluff is just so I could share this baby race above, which is all you really need for any half-time entertainment.
Wedges From Above
Since I first saw Newport Wedge, aka “the Dirty Old Wedge” in the Endless Summer movie as grom, it has never failed to grab me by the short and curlies. Surfers love a Wedge, and Newport’s is the Big Daddy of 'em all. This drone footage though was a new angle for me that showed the dynamics of the joint.
Jon Roseman: Front Foot Leggy Icon
Tavarua Resort CEO Jon Roseman first travelled to Fiji in the 1980s and became a partner in 1992. He has a decent claim to have had more lefthand barrels than any other surfer on the planet in the last 30 years. This latest clip shows he’s lost none of his style or positioning. That he’s threaded all those thousands of tubes wearing his leash, or leggy, on his front foot makes his achievement all the more remarkable. I’d put him ahead of Matt Kechele and Guilherme Herdy in the front foot leggy icons. And the reason? He started off as a natural footer, wearing his leash on his back foot and kept with it when he switched goofy. “Plus if you don’t make the tube, you can shoot your board farther in front of you while falling off the back of your board, and if all goes well you get shot out the back of the wave,” he told Surfline.
The Mythical Eight Wave Set
Not exactly breaking news, as this swell was from back in July 2022 at Ma'alaea Harbour in Maui. But seeing it is so rare to see an 8-wave set, each wave building bigger than the last, I felt it was worth a revisit.
Freddie Meadows and Looking Sideways
In another instalment of the mutual appreciation society, aka pissing in each other’s pockets, I enjoyed Matt Barr’s recent Looking Sideways podcast with Freddie Meadows. I’d distilled Freddie’s life in my book the Breitling Book Of Surfing, just before Freddie’s latest big wave find up in the Arctic Circle (pic above), and Matt delves into that mission and Freddie’s thirst for adventure. Oh and the book is still on sale at all good online bookstores.
Ha ha. Right on Benno