In My Opinion…Thoughts from Pete Peligroso

Didn’t you just love that recent Trestles webcast?

I sat up late into the night (every night) watching the world’s best ‘athletes’ grappling with the world’s best HP waves, driven half crazy by the judging scores (jaw) dropping every heat and then trying to make sense of it! What the hell are they looking for? No wonder Taj almost had a breakdown after his close call loss to Kelly, stick on the rail, go to the air, power hack like its 1980s…what the hell, at this rate Occy` could make a second comeback! If the ‘Associated league of world Surfing Wrestling Tennis Pros carry on like this, then Taj won’t be the only one with his head buried in a towel at the end of heats!

I am pretty sure that John John surfed the best, in fact he is the most complete surfer on the planet (well apart from Kelly who doesn’t count because he’s actually an alien and not of this planet)…peaked in the semis apparently. So wrong, JJ actually pulled some snizzle that was so radical they had no name for it and he didn’t even have his feet connected to the board at the time…” hey head judge if he ain’t connected to his board do we score it?” and no other part of his body to boot. And he made it. And no claim! What’s not to love with JJ’s surfing, perhaps he’s just too cool for the new ‘athlete’ school. They should have given the trophy after his fifth 9-pointer in the quarters.

And how about that commentary, are they trying to reach a non-surfing audience by any chance? Wrong strategy, Brazil is where all the $ action is. Give the title to Medina and we can all go home! Those mid-western farmers ain’t ever gonna get it, I’m not actually getting it and I’ve been surfing too many year to recall. I want my surf stars back, the ones with unique styles; the ones with bad habits, chemically enhanced and with character…like the ocean, random, chaotic and magical in small and sometimes large doses! The Legends heat, that was the real buzz, Pottz and Gerr, real nicknames, over-weight and probably with bad backs, they didn’t like each other; gladiators all. Ok it all went a bit tame once they actually hit the water, but hey, we’ll forgive them that for the life-affirming shot of nostalgia they shot to the over 50s! Paddle out and sit around for a while, 2 waves in 30 minutes, slow motion take-offs, wobbly bottom turns and edging the rail whenever a section presented itself. Yep, even ex-pros get slow!

Then it hit me, 1.30am and I am all Joe Turpelled out, my eyeballs are frazzled and the laptop has melted and the truth, the light came into my brain, like a little flicker before exploding with brilliant clarity! That there is a surf prophet, a man of infinite wisdom and foresight, he understood that good surfing could only happen in good waves, that the dream tour needed to be in dream surf, that surfing is nothing like tennis! That CI surfboards makes everyone who rides one surf like a pro (okay scrub that last bit). That he would tell his people the truth and that the people couldn’t handle the truth, and he was then cast into the wilderness…the surf messiah! The Bobby Martinez guest commentator campaign starts here!