Is surfing really the hardest sport in the world?

Recently, Kelly Slater responded to an online poll asking which sport was harder, soccer or surfing, with a bombshell…neither. “I wouldn’t rate soccer but I don’t play,” writes Kelly Slater. “I would say skating, free soloing, F1, MMA, gymnastics etc are all at the cutting edge of ability for humans.” Kelly Slater’s comment came just after ESPN had released their definitive list of “sports ranked by degree of difficulty” with surfing filling the lowly twenty-third position barely beating badminton and well behind tennis, volleyball and squash. According to ESPN, the results were compiled by “our panel of experts, a group made up of sports scientists from the United States Olympic Committee, of academicians who study the science of muscles and movement, of a star two-sport athlete, and of journalists who spend their professional lives watching athletes succeed and fail." In today's episode, Chas Smith, the noted author of the North Shore epic Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell, as well as the best-selling Blessed Are the Bank Robbers, "a rollicking true story of Bibles and bank robberies in Southern California", examines the difficulty of surfing, or not, and the surprise coming to of retirement of current world surfing champ Filipe Toledo.

This interview with Jodie Cooper was the last podcast the surf writer and commentator Ben Mondy recorded for us and took place around eighteen months ago.  BeachGrit had employed the Mondy, who lives in England, to make a few Dirty Water podcasts while Charlie and I busied ourselves with leisure. Mondy and I had worked together at a Sydney publishing house in the real early two thousands, he Tracks, me Waves. And while my surfer connections withered to nothing after Andy died and Bruce fled the scene, Mondy’s had flourished as he pivoted hard into surf commentary.  It never ran ‘cause I asked Mondy to call back Jodie Cooper and lean a little more into her famous, and successful, assault case against surf mat aficionado Mark Thomson. In the interview, Joe Cooper touched on the assault and her reasons for pressing charges.  “I wasn’t his first victim. Hopefully, I was his last. He picked the wrong person as you know. He picks on women, he picks on young kids, that’s the type of species that guy is and there’s a lot of them out there still.” Initially, Jodie was gonna avoid any police action and wait for her moment to strike back.  “I was going to suck it up. It was traumatic fore sure. I didn’t need the attention. I didn’t want the attention and I knew it was going to draw a lot of attention. I was thinking, ‘Don’t worry, mate, I’ll wait and bide my time…an eye for an eye.”  But,  “I got so much feedback, people contacted me who he had attacked pleading with me to do something. That’s why I decided to press charges.” It’s a good interview, but I wanted more! The revenge fantasy! What hell would’ve rained upon her assailant?  Anyway, the files just appeared on my desktop, had a re-listen, though it’s a story worth re-telling.  “There isn’t much about Jodie Cooper that I don’t love,” Matt Warshaw told me back in 2020. “Jodie seems indomitable in a way, unbreakable, but there’s something kind of hard-luck about her too. I don’t quite know why. Maybe I’m just still pissed on her behalf because that geezer Thompson who assaulted her basically walked, which seemed like a pretty grievous miscarriage of justice.

Almost one decade ago, while filming for Strange Rumblings, Dion Agius and other Globe surfers including Creed McTaggart, sought out the circles of Greenbush in Sumatra, Indonesia. Greenbush is one of those waves where tuberiding to the death is preferable to opening the cat-flap or proning straight. For surfers such as Craig Anderson and, in our case, Damien Hobgood, it is where their courage and their skills are most visible. I’d heard about Damien Hobgood’s solo session at 12-foot at Greenbush from Dion Agius and Creed McTaggart. As I swooped on their drinks cabinet they mimicked what they believed had transpired. Giant drops beyond the vertical axis! Circles that were so big that even if a camera had been there it wouldn’t have been able to translate its enormity to pixels. Damien, see, was in Bali and had heard the wave was going to be good and, short of partners, flew, drove and hopped a boat until he was sitting in the channel of an Indonesia version of Teahupoo, ready to surf solo. And solo he did. The following day, when the swell had dropped but was still a respectable, even horrifying, eight foot, Dion and Creed and the rest of the Globe gang arrived. And Damien, hardened from the previous day, owned it. “Damo acted like an animal out there, like a man possessed. It was the most insane performance of talent and courage I’ve ever seen,” said Dion Agius. “He did not give one fuck and was getting bounced off the reef and bleeding everywhere and just kept charging.” In this wide-ranging interview, Damien Hobgood talks hunting Black Death waves, the Teahupoo wave that nearly killed him, culture wars and the true meaning of Christmas.

In a little under a year, Brazil is going to field two-time world champion Filipe Toledo as part of its two-man team to the Olympics, the surf event being held at Teahupoo. It ain’t no secret that Filipe Toledo is scared of the place. He is the only surfer to score a zero-point heat there. A moment in 2015 that was subsequently dubbed “A brave act of cowardice.” Last year, Filipe Toledo reprised his brave act of cowardice when he refused to paddle for a set wave in his heat against old-timers Kelly Slater and Nathan Hedge.  As Chas Smith wrote, Filipe Toledo, with reputation for not enjoying the Teahupo’o battle, would certainly spear naysayers in the throat by dropping in to infamy, no?  Apparently no. Kelly Slater and Nathan Hedge traded waves, big and perfect, one after the other after the other with Toledo holding priority well out the back, refusing to paddle, one after the other after the other. Kelly Slater, barreled, unable to contain smile. Nathan Hedge, barreled, unable to contain smile or beat, smartly, boss. Filipe Toledo, un-barreled, holding priority for fifteen-odd minutes while Slater and Hedge swapped beneath him. In the dying seconds, the King of Saquarema swung on a baby tube then punched board in channel. It also ain’t no secret that the Brazil’s best Teahupoo surfers are Gabriel Medina and Italo Ferreira. But they ain’t going. And, yet, what if? What if Filipe Toledo is playing a game of rope-a-dope with the world; what if Filipe’s masterplan is to make the world think he is too scared to paddle into a set at Teahupoo and then, with Olympic gold on the line, create one of the most unlikely wins in Games history? Chas Smith, who hates surfing, explores this topic over the course of five minutes.

In the latest episode of Dirty Water, Chas Smith picks apart Bev Hills 90210 star Ian Ziering’s wild street brawl with a gang of “chubby teenage Latinx girls”. “No actor is more surf adjacent than Ian Ziering (save Keanu Reeves and Matthew Perry),” Smith wrote when news broke of the melee. “The now 58-year-old got his start on the 90s program Beverly Hills 90210, which was, itself, entirely surf adjacent. After a ten season run, Ziering, who played Steve Sanders, went into C-list purgatory until 2013 when the absurdist Sharknado became a surprise hit. Again, very surf adjacent. “For some reason, Ziering decided to address fighting a gang of chubby fifteen-year-old Latinx girls on miniature motorbikes by taking the offensive instead of burying his head in shame. “‘In an attempt to assess any damage I exited my car,” he wrote. ‘This action, unfortunately, escalated into a physical altercation, which I navigated to protect myself.’ “Unstated ‘from a gang of chubby fifteen-year-old Latinx girls on miniature motorbikes.’” “He continued without shame or irony, ‘I am relieved to report that my daughter and I are both completely unscathed, but the incident has left me deeply concerned about the growing boldness of such groups who disrupt public safety and peace. This situation highlights a larger issue of hooliganism on our streets and the need for effective law enforcement responses to such behavior.’ “Shocking and embarrassing,” says Smith. “And, thanks to Ian Ziering, a gift. We will never as surfers beat groms, no matter how much you want to. Bad look all round.” Smith also bids the WSL sayonara after yet another WSL-created program gets iced and examines the likelihood of an executive from Old Spice (via Logitech) being able to get Vans back its long-lost cool.

ll that heat about the new Palm Springs Surf Club wavepool, featuring the tech of wavepool king Tom Lochtefeld, has been entirely warranted despite earlier fears it was a modern incarnation of the old Disney Typhoon Lagoon. The Tom Lochtefeld tech, which is called Surf Loch, is diff to Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch, Wavegarden, American Wave Machines and Surf Lakes. It uses a combo of vacuum and pressure to make waves. The pint-sized proto was built and surfers, including Mason Ho, Jackson Dorian etc, came from all over the world, flared and made clips. The pool was then demolished to make way for the full-sized tank, which opens to the public on January 1, 2024.  Tom Lochtefeld is a long-time friend of BeachGrit and its co-master Charlie Smith. In this long-form interview Lochtefeld reveals the secrets behind creating better-than-perfect waves, why Surf Lakes is gonna self-destruct and why the Slater plough is destined for the junkyard.

In the latest episode of Dirty Water, the celebrated author Chas Smith reacts to Kelia Moniz giving hell to Roxy’s parent company, the Authentic Brands Group. “The stylish longboarder is a two-time champion, multiple-time cover girl and, most importantly, surf royalty, hailing from the revered Moniz family,” says Smith. “She is, in a word, indelible and has been a face of Roxy for nearly two decades.” Via Instagram, Kelia Moniz explained how, after Covid, she signed a great contract, the best she had ever had. After ABG completed purchase of Roxy, however the contract was terminated and she was told she could come back but with her salary slashed by ninety percent. Smith says Quiksilver, Billabong, RVCA, Hurley should be studiously avoided, if not burned to the ground, as surfers pivot to surfer-owned brands like Florence Marine X, TCSS etc. And, anyone seen wearing Quiksilver, Billabong et al should be “publicly shamed.”

If you knew Chris Cote like I know Chris Cote, you’d find the sweetest Peewee Herman-esque lover of life, gags, tumbling, surf all day, no-alcohol parties all night, and positivity wherever he can find it. Also a shill for the World Surf League, but we all gotta make a living, the truth be told. The respect is mutual, as you might imagine, with Chris Cote describing Chas Smith as the Tucker Carlson of surf media and BeachGrit as the sport’s own Fox News. A heady double compliment!

Today’s guest Andy Lyon is the Malibu realtor and First Point surfer of fifty years who achieved a considerable notoriety recently when he threw a rock into another man’s surfboard following an entanglement, the video of the event going viral.  He lost his job, had his address published and a beat down was suggested his four year old kid Glider.  Lyon represents a vanishing era where lineups were harshly policed with a clearly defined pecking order, a limpid simplicity greased with the underlying threat of violence.  The highlight, for me, of this interview is our guest’s reply to the posit that Malibu is a sissy wave for old men and girls, not sissy old men who beat up on girls.

Mel, who is fifty-three, no longer has the foaming jaws of a meth addict. Today he is the sort of man who loves his children with a passion, his parents with respect, his wife with generosity and his friends with loyalty. He wears slightly too big flannel shirts and pants with stone washing applied at the factory. On January 8 last year, Pete rode a thirty-foot tube at Mavs. “Everyone on earth should see this ride,” said Kelly Slater. In this interview, Pete talks about how he stuck his lance into that monster thirty-foot wave at Maverick's neck, how he was lucky to avoid jail during his meth years and the mysterious beauty of BeachGrit's below-the-line commentators.