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Matthew McConaughey gives rising surfer Griffin Colapinto advice on how to deal with fawning fans!

Matthew McConaughey gives rising surfer Griffin Colapinto advice on how to deal with fawning fans!

“Weston-Webb’s perfect 10 wasn’t even second…”

Paris. The City of Light. The City of Love. Host of the ’24 Summer Olympiad, where athletes from all over the world come to enjoy fine cuisine, heavenly art, architecture, music, poetry… ballet in its finest form. Yes, the runners and jumpers, balance beam balancers and iron ball throwers will be in heaven. I will walk the gilded streets, lightly strewn with Pomeranian garbage and make sure to bring you all the gossip.

Sadly, our surf heroes, both male and female, won’t be there. In fact, they’ll be as far away as you can get, right on the other side of the world, sharing time with Saturday Night Live’s Colin Jost in “The End of the Road” in Tahiti.

Teahupo’o, or Head Place, is no slouch, unless you count the cuisine, art, architecture, music, poetry and ballet. It is one of the most intimidating waves on earth, framed by the greenest rocks jutting into the bluest skies, mocked only by the clarity of the water, only slightly tarnished by a 25:1 gasoline-oil mixture.

Surf fans are certainly well acquainted with Teahupo’o, its terror and its glory. The World Surf League, which around 1976 branded itself as the “global home of surfing” through 2015, perhaps less so.

Less than a month ago, it was receiving serious criticism for the “cruel and sloppy” insult of the great wave icon Keala Kennelly. The Tahiti Pro had just ended with great performances from Rio Waida, Gabriel Medina, John John Florence but especially Vahine Fierro and Tatiana Weston-Webb. The latter caught a great, throaty beast and scored a perfect ten, which the World Surf League labeled as “the first ever” by a woman.

According to the press release:

Despite losing to eventual event winner Fierro, Tatiana Weston-Webb (BRA) made history today with the first ever Perfect 10 by a woman at the Tahiti Pro. Weston-Webb dug deep to paddle over the edge and into a huge set wave, bottomed out and nearly hit her rail in the critical part of the wave, but recovered and landed deep in the barrel, behind the heavy Teahupo’o curtain. Weston-Webb then navigated the foam ball and the spit to fly out of the barrel for the Perfect score. Weston-Webb’s great surfing continues to push the progression of surfing even further in today’s pumping conditions.

Sadly, more than two decades earlier, the aforementioned Kennelly dug deep to paddle over the edge and into a massive set wave, reached bottom, put himself deep in the barrel and scored a perfect ten. The Kauai local was forced to go to social media to declare:

I am getting really tired of the media downplaying the surfing legacy of my generation (and previous generations). Recently one of my greatest achievements was completely erased and handed off to someone else, only to be spread all over the internet.

Perhaps Chelsea Hedges was one of the “previous generations,” though not specifically named, and let’s turn to the mainstream media giant Guardian for the stack on:

Weston-Webb’s perfect 10 wasn’t even the second. Australian surfer and 2005 world champion Chelsea Hedges also scored a perfect 10 on the wave the same year the event was canceled, Kennelly said in a video posted to Instagram. Timeline coverage of those events corroborates Kennelly’s claims, and the WSL website now refers to Weston-Webb’s perfect 10 as “the first since the return of the women’s event at the Tahiti Pro.” The WSL did not respond to a request for comment on the dispute.

But do you think the AI ​​bot that wrote the press release has been disconnected? Maybe even replaced by one that loves strong coffee, spicy food and live music?

A certain “Emily Morgan” is definitely looking for a job now that her old employer, Surfer Magazine, is headed by a “real boy.

It is not unusual for the World Surf League to decline to respond to a request for comment. The organization presents North Korea under Kim Jong Un as a haven for free speech.

Erik Logan?

Are you there?

More as the story develops.