Surfing
Five Surfers We’d Like to See in Brazil
For their games, for their verve, for their excitement.
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A Photo We Love: Jamie O Board Transfer
© Brian Bielmann
The Billabong Rio Pro will most likely start tomorrow. Taj Burrow has won it three times; Slater three. Last year it was Jordy on his faux title run; the year before it was John John.
With gals and guys lining up side by side, that's a week of 30-minute heats we're going to sit through, most good, some with potential, a few that are positively vomitous.
How can we give the contest a little more zing? What if we introduced the following five wildcards. Yeah, I know there's officially only four, but let's take the injury wildcard, too.
Mason Ho
The 25-year-old Hawaiian has been grimly tapping lips on the qualifying series for years. But it ain't his lip tap that shines. It's his ability to churn butter out of the sourest of milk that makes Mason our number one pick. Backside alley-oops, four airs on a wave, soul arches, laybacks, Mason'll light up your imagination. And his post-heat interviews? Sublime! "Dude! I was going ping and the wave was going pong! Ho ho! It was surreal out there, baby! You know what surreal means? I don't!"
Yago Dora
Volcom's secret weapon, a Brazilian kid with so much game the American freesurfer Nate Tyler, says he's, "like John John or something." Tall, with style, able to link his turns and with the "craziest air game of anybody out there," says Nate. "On the trip I went with Yago to the Maldives he was doing the biggest stale-fishes into the flats and stomping 'em." Yago v John. Yago v Gabriel. That's pro surfing!
Jamie O'Brien
You might be thinking Jamie is a Pipe guy and when he ain't doin' Pipe he's back-flipping into the Pipe lagoon for one of his outrageous episodes of Who Is JOB? We want to see JOB in Brazil 'cause, like Mason, he'll ink his stupid, funny, almost-impossible-to-decipher humour onto every wave. Entertainment? He delivers.
Craig Anderson
If only for the chimera of beauty, of style over function, to float over the contest, briefly.
Dane Reynolds
We ain't buying Reynolds' sudden decline. He's secretly in training! The cases of beer are locked away! How sublime it would be to see his body, in trim, his boards, thinner, decorating Rio's crummy waves.
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