Were you wondering what Obama had been up to since he passed the torch of presidency over to Donald? Did you think he might be sat in a darkened room, damp towelette upon his forehead, listening to the news of Trump’s first week and wondering where it all went wrong? Well If you did you’d be wrong, very very wrong in fact.
In reality Obama has been cruising with pal Richard Branson, over on his private island in the delightfully tropical British Virgin archipelago, where the pair decided to have a kitesurf off.
Branson is already a pretty accomplished kite-surfer, (remember that shot of him doing it whilst his naked wife clung to him like a limpet?), so the competition was to see if Obama could go further on a regular board than Branson could on a hydrofoil.
“It was a huge honour to be able to invite President Barack and Michelle Obama down to the British Virgin Islands for a complete break after Barack finished his second term as President and the family left the White House,” says Branson in a blog post on Virgin’s website which detailed the escapade.
“One of the first stories Barack told me when he and Michelle arrived on Moskito Island was how, just before he became President, he had been surfing on a dangerous break in Hawaii. When he came in from an exhilarating session, the new head of his security team turned to him and said: ‘This will be the last time you surf for eight years.’ For the next eight years, he didn’t have the chance to surf, enjoy watersports or do many of the things he loved.”
“So it was tremendous to offer him the chance to learn to kitesurf. The sport has really taken off in the past decade and we have the perfect conditions and team to help anyone learn. I have also wanted to learn foilboard surfing. So we decided to set up a friendly challenge: could Barack learn to kitesurf before I learned to foilboard? We agreed to have a final day battle to see who could stay up the longest.”
