Wave of trepidation hits Olympic surfers (Will Swanton)
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Malik Joyeaux died at Pipe.
Did ChatGPT write this?
So many mistakes/lies it’s hilarious
hahaha. Robinson the number 1 big wave surfer in the world, Florence second.
Gotta be chatGBT goofy.
What a load of shit.
Can we just change the nickname 'chopes' to ummm 'eyeballs' ;)
- 'I thought I’d lost an eyeball.'
- 'I could have sworn my left eyeball just popped clean out.'
- 'I was just sure my eyeball was gone.'
- 'Jack Robinson will have a lot of eyeballs on him'
- 'Suspecting I had only one eyeball, which was better than none – do eyeballs float?'
- 'All those eyeballs on her.'
All those who agree say eye.
Balls.
Nice zen haha
- Olympic commentary might be up to their eye baubles at eyeballs
Aye.
High balls may affect the performance of a certain current 2 x world champ* also.
I swear I’m wondering how many of the regular posters on SN are bots.
But I’m not wondering about that piece of drivel.
It is an interesting question @batfink. Should we come up with a safe word? I would enjoy to have a safe word. I like learning new things and would be grateful for advice as to how I can improve my communications. Improving myself to make my communications clearer to those who are listening to those communications gives me pleasure. Surfing is fun.
batfink wrote:I swear I’m wondering how many of the regular posters on SN are bots.
But I’m not wondering about that piece of drivel.
Interesting.
Care to forward an example of a commenter you suspect of being a bot? I’m sure no one will get too offended . I’d never considered it and can’t really think of a regular poster who doesn’t have a certain style or personality that would tend to preclude AI fakery.
Yes well done Age, 1 million and 1 waves at Chopes for one million wipeouts and 1 tube. Starting a thread with this nonsense is good, lets the reader know what they're dealing with. My fear is not for a chinese surfer forced by the communist party to surf or die at Chopes. Im sure she can do a less convincing Filipe act and get by. My fear is if the land locked chinese population is even partially attracted to surfing, what the affects on crowding in south east asia would that have.
just fyi, if people don't realise, @Age is quoting a published article from the Australian written by Will Swanton (sports reporter & walkley award-winner), published 6:33am April 23, 2024. Actually, haha, @Age may BE Will Swanton.. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/author/will-swanton
(there's 20 comments on the Australian's website about the article.. I don't subscribe, but would be interested to see what comments have been made..! any subscribers on SN?)
Following up on basesix
Crew welcomes aboard Award Winning brutally honest WSL Olympic Reporter.
Crew think Will's terrifying account seems a little over dramatic with lashings of fear factor!
Plenty of News crew in our swellnet lineup...be right at home here!
https://www.penguin.com.au/authors/will-swanton
Will's Books...
https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/2645167.Will_Swanton
Will is a high rank tennis player & wrote Mick's first title..."Some Day" Inside the dream Tour!
Walkley Award Winning feature writer
Sports Journo of the Year
Finalist for Achievements in Storytelling Award
Outstanding Columnist Award
7x winner of Sport Australia Media Awards
Welcome aboard Will...
Baptism of fire...first day at the office...usual to feel a little hot under the collar around the water cooler!
Olympic Ideal storytelling...tbb was hangin' on every word.
Not sure why we'd worry over the Chinese Chicks...like, have they run outta drugs or somethin'!
Win lose or draw her medal eventually adds to Oz Tally..surely that's what's most at stake here!
Thanks to doped out Chinese Olympians that Oz has now won every past & pre Olympics Medal Tallies.
Pretty sure all us unvaxed Aussies will soon be awarded All Covid Era Olympic Medals by default!
VIP's give us something to chew on...donate our prize money for more Chinese secret herbs'n'spices Rehab Labs.
Cheers Basesix and TBB, but this muddies the water further.
A respected sports writer releasing error ridden copy that people are immediately suspect is AI generated?
Yes. Apologies. I should have provided a little more context. I posted the article from The Australian (as it is behind the paywall) and I should have provided the link.
But I'm imagining that is just the start of the hyperoble and innacuracies that we are going to get from the lazy mainstream media.
I was hoping that that Teahupo’o put on a swell for the ages for the Olympics, but I'm now thinking that would not be a good idea on so many fronts.
Link to article: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/olympics/wave-of-trepidation-hits...
Here is a link to the article if you don't subscribe or have a tool to get around the paywall https://archive.is/20240423000218/https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport...
Lol, no one is dying. They can sit super far out and in the channel. The 'Toledo' approach.
truebluebasher wrote:Not sure why we'd worry over the Chinese Chicks...like, have they run outta drugs or somethin'!
She does have a backup plan TBB. Just take her legrope off, slide off her board and start swimming. Drugs will flow then!!
Age wrote:Yes. Apologies. I should have provided a little more context. I posted the article from The Australian (as it is behind the paywall) and I should have provided the link.
But I'm imagining that is just the start of the hyperoble and innacuracies that we are going to get from the lazy mainstream media.
I was hoping that that Teahupo’o put on a swell for the ages for the Olympics, but I'm now thinking that would not be a good idea on so many fronts.
Link to article: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/olympics/wave-of-trepidation-hits...
Age. Hi.
From The Australian, say no more. Couldn’t get their shit together if they tried.AW
Tryin' hard not laugh at the innocence of all this...Reckon the Boss might put Age on commission...
Consider most of the crew luck out with our own dud forums_______________ .
Like check back an EON later...Nope! Still not a bite!
Along comes Age ... stirs the pot with a dose of News Ltd Fear Factor & swellnet turns dayglow!
Ben be countin' his Bit Coin Piles...nice work Age...got anymore of that off label xxx scary stuff!
Age becomes the next swellmagnate...smokin' $50's...sells out /R\ swellnet to the Rocket Man.
Recall this...
Blob raked in swellnet crew & eventually squeezed the whole of Oz into his Breitbart shop cart...cryin' help me!
Every forum he touched lit up like a Xmas tree...Do I buy the Trump Shot Mug or the Trump Mug Shot!
tbb is stoked with his Trump Mug Shot Shot Mug...still can't get a handle on it...Cheers Blob!
Who’s dreaming of going for gold at the Olympics? Put this poster on your wall-
https://www.australianphotography.com/news/flotsam-festival-drops-in-on-...
yeh, fwor ^, that Grambeau pic of Rodrigo Reinoson getting sucked over the falls at chopes is just incredible..
(it was the cover of the Ted G issue 43 of White Horses; the sequence of pics and backstory is explained in WH issue 45, both still available on their website by the look https://whitehorses.com.au/product-category/single-issues/ )
I’ve been wiped out a million times at Tahiti’s Teahupo’o. Tubed once. A fair trade. All for research purposes ahead of the Olympics.
The most frightening aspect is how the wave comes back for you. You get slammed onto a razor-sharp reef. Then you’re held under. Then you come up gasping for air and then the bastard somehow sucks you back down by the ankles. On one memorable occasion, I thought I’d lost an eyeball.
I’d sort of landed on the left side of my face. So much pressure was on the socket during the hold-down that I could have sworn my left eyeball just popped clean out. Like a ping-pong ball might. It didn’t even hurt. I was just sure my eyeball was gone. When I say lives are in danger when Olympic surfing is staged at Teahupo’o, which everyone calls Chopes, I kid you not. Unqualified amateurs and a 14-year-old Chinese kid are to be thrown into the most dangerous wave in the world. But you have to know this about Chopes. It’s killed before and will kill again.
Jack Robinson will have a lot of eyeballs on him as one of Australia’s hottest Olympic gold medal prospects. He’s the best big-wave surfer bound for Chopes. He won the World Surf League contest at Margaret River on Sunday against the second best big-wave surfer in the world, American John John Florence.
At the other end of the spectrum, however, is China’s Yang Siqi, frighteningly inexperienced. She doesn’t know what she’s in for. For her own safety, she shouldn’t be sent out in a large swell. It’s like stepping into the ring with Mike Tyson when you’ve never taken a real punch.
Current men’s world champion Brazil’s Filipe Toledo doesn’t want to surf Chopes ever again. What hope for Siqi? Robinson says it’s where he had the worst wipeout of his life.
“I remember it was my first big trip, the first big swell that I chased,” he says. “When you’re out there, sitting out the back, you can’t really see the waves coming. Usually, at all the other spots, you see the waves coming but Teahupo’o is like – it sucks below sea level. The waves go so, so low. I’d been waiting for like an hour and a half to catch one. I hopped up over this wave and I was like, ‘I’m gonna go the biggest wave that comes through.’ I took off and I couldn’t get into it in time.”
It’s the weirdest feeling when you hang atop a Teahupo’o lip. Like standing on the railing of a second-storey building, I imagine. Time stands still. A paralysing, hopeless, helpless fear.
“I just got stuck in the lip,” Robinson recalls. “It felt like forever. It felt like I was in the lip for, like, a couple of minutes because it was so slow and so tall. I could see all the reef. It was so white. Oh my God. How did I put myself in this position? As I went over I pin-dropped, like, tin-soldiered to the bottom. And then I came back up, got a breath, but then the wave sucked me back down again. It was almost like a two-wave hold-under but from the same wave. The next wave almost got me. I didn’t have any air left at the end. I got rescued. It was my first trip to Teahupo’o. Scary.”
Olympic surfers are being given the option of staying on a giant cruise ship off Chopes. The Australian team of Robinson, Ethan Ewing – who broke his back at Tahiti last year – Molly Picklum and Tyler Wright will be one of the few crews to ditch the luxury of the big boat for a humble private home in the fishing village. If Ariarne Titmus versus Katie Ledecky and Summer McIntosh looms as swimming’s Race of the Century, Robinson against Florence in the surfing final is a waxhead’s equivalent.
“I’m feeling good,” Robinson says. “That’s the final I wanted (at Margs), and I wanted to throw everything at it. We’ll have many more heats in the future, I’m sure. What a day. I’m super-humbled to be here and win. I’m so grateful for this moment. He fires me up so much. There’s no one else I’d rather final with than John John.”
It’s just such a beastly wave. Suspecting I had only one eyeball, which was better than none – do eyeballs float? Can I find it? – I distinctly remember thinking, “Get me out of here”. Mick Fanning had to surf it for years to get a handle on it. Even Jack Robbo treads carefully and he was basically raised in throaty WA barrels.
Siqi is from a landlocked area of rural China. Didn’t see the sea shells on the sea shore until she was nine, when she asked an uncle about life adventures she could dive into. He took her sailing at Hainan Island. She was no Top Slingsby, she couldn’t swim and her boat kept capsizing, but she was drawn to the motion of the ocean. She swapped her yacht for a twin-fin. Soon enough she’ll be China’s first surfing Olympian.
“I didn’t know what surfing was at the time, had no concept of the sport, and hadn’t even seen it before,” she tells China Youth Daily. “The first time I saw someone surfing was at a seaside club. I thought they were so cool.”
Chopes isn’t so cool. It’s a beautiful setting but a monster. She’s having four daily training sessions. Learning to hold her breath for three minutes, which may not be long enough if she’s dragged down by the ankles.
She qualified by beating British surf-skate phenomenon Sky Brown and Costa Rica’s WSL competitor Brisa Hennessy at the World Surfing Games at Puerto Rico, which is an impressive result, but those waves were child’s play. She’s never seen anything like Chopes.
“I love surfing because it’s particularly exciting,” she says. “Catching a good wave makes me very happy. The sea is like my good friend because it gives me a lot of good waves.”
And yet, Big Chopes ain’t particularly exciting. It’s bloody petrifying. Catching a good wave at big Chopes is borderline impossible. The sea isn’t acting like your good friend. More a sworn enemy. There have been five deaths on the reef, including big-wave experts Thierry Vernaudon and Malik Joyeux. If it can take them down, no one’s truly safe, not even Jack Robbo. Siqi’s opening Olympic heat will be nothing if not fascinating. All those eyeballs on her.