A White Horses Essay
IF HUMANS HAD INDEED MADE A WAVE THAT OUTDID NATURE, MIGHT IT NOT BE THE BEGINNING OF THE END?
You’ll recall back in September 2017, the World Surf League put on a trial event at Kelly’s Pool in Lemoore, California. It was called the Future Classic, and it remains to my knowledge the only professional surfing event in history to which the media was specifically un-invited. Actually told: don’t show up.
I had long since ceased to be baffled by the WSL’s often puzzling actions, especially its awesome control-freak secrecy. After all, this is an organisation that after four years in charge of the world tour is yet to allow its actual owner to be interviewed.
But having a pro contest in Kelly’s pool and nobody’s allowed to watch? You’re just asking to be kicked in the head by every surf journalist on the planet, and sure enough, that’s pretty much what happened.
A few weeks later, Dave Prodan, the WSL’s Vice President of Global Identity, contacted me.
“I have the opportunity to bring some folks to the Ranch for a day,” Dave wrote. “No pressure, no expectations. I know it’s short notice.” And named a date three weeks away.
Well, what would you do? Something like I did, I bet – step into a rental car with a board bag and a wetsuit, and head inland toward the greatest and most carefully curated mystery in surfing. What the hell was going on up there, really? Could the mad idea of surfing liberated from the ocean really exist? And most of all: what’s it like to ride?
Dave had told me to keep it confidential. That lasted about five minutes. Swiftly it was confirmed that several of my fellow journalists had also received the Golden Ticket. A deal of wrangling had already commenced, in which they were frantically trading off story rights for air-tickets.
Some of us were excited, others wary, if not cynical. “What if it’s a set-up?” muttered my buddy Sean Doherty. “Revenge for us all slagging it off so hard? What if Kelly just wants to wait till we’re in position, then send an eight-foot bomb from nowhere and humiliate us all?”
Me, I was conflicted. Frothing, yeah, of course I was frothing – when it comes to surfing, that’s almost my entire emotional range. There was some resentment too, left over from the way this pool had been pitched into
