Raimana Van Bastolaer dancing with the leviathan. Photo: Tim McKenna
“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering. All the rest are merely games.”
“He threw a coupla punches, and I threw a coupla punches, and that was the result of it. It was not a big deal. Yeah, we’re men, and these things happen.”
The first quote is the most famous Hemingway quote that he never said. It sounds like something he would say, but it probably never passed his lips – according to the Hemingway scholars anyway. The second is from Jamie O’Brien, explaining how he managed to get in a punch up with Ricardo Dos Santos in the middle of a heat. Both get you thinking about sport, why we do it, and what sport actually means.
Bullfighting appealed to Hemingway because he was a man obsessed with the notion of life as a slow-burning tragedy to which we all must eventually succumb. The question was never if, or when, for Hemingway, but how straight you kept your shoulders during your final encore. Dignity in loss or destruction. It’s in many of his books, and it’s at the heart of the bullfight, too. Some who read this will decry the archaic killing of bulls in Spain and Mexico. They can go to hell. There are few things in this world that combine the terrible with the sublime quite like a well-executed bullfight. To watch two beautiful creatures engage in a fight where one or both die is horrific and awe inspiring – as close as most will ever get to God. The applause, if and when it comes, is for both the victor and the vanquished, and the bitter bond that unites them both.
Which brings us, in a round about way, to surfing Teahupo’o. Since its “discovery” and addition to the World Tour, it has raised interesting questions about the meaning of competitive surfing. At eight of the nine other spots on tour, surfers are being judged on how hard they can hit the lip and how far they can tweak their air reverses. A full 80% of the time these men are just frolicking in the surf zone. Then, when a red blob sprouts on the NOAA charts, their day jobs turn from playing in the most literal sense of the word into the unimaginable terror of dancing with the leviathan.
The bleakest part of all about Teahupo’o at size is that the end section always closes out. Think about that. From the second you commit yourself to the very last moment before you kick out, you know that the only thing awaiting you is obliteration. There is no finishing the wave, just escaping to fight another day. Somewhere between quixotic and masochistic, Hemingway would have appreciated the symbolism of Teahupo’o as sport.
It’s not, really. Or perhaps it is, barely. To make competitors paddle out in maxing Teahupo’o is cruelty on par with the bullfight or Russian roulette. Some of the bigger swells over the years have seen competitors refusing to don their jerseys. And who would blame them? That–that thing that explodes across jagged reef at the end of the known world–is not part of the job description, could never logically be something that you would ask a fellow human to engage. Perhaps when it’s small to medium-sized, but not when it’s big. To actually want to ride across the imploding face of such a thing with nothing but your arms, legs, and six feet by two inches of foam, is the definition of perverse. It’s not a death wish that animates those rare surfers, but a certain subliminal fascination with one’s own mortality and the thrill that comes from testing the vague and ever-changing boundary that it represents. To get so close to death you can feel it tickling your shoulder when the barrel spits, that’s what it means to ride big Teahupo’o, and maybe what it means to ride big waves in general. Everything else is just recreation.
It looks like we won’t get that type of monster wave this year, but the very best grasp this. The very best know that they aren’t really competing against each other when it’s big and everyone in the lineup paddles seaward when the sets appear. They have come to reckon with more formidable forces. These are wild people. These are ferocious people. People who speak to a side of us, the awed spectators, that we are generally not allowed to indulge in our daily lives.
Imagine that you get into a fist fight with your co-worker this afternoon. You are called before the review board, and you and he both stutter out lame apologies combined with mea culpas and promises to never engage in such abominable behavior ever again so help you God. But what you are both thinking, what is catching painfully in both of your throats is the simple truth “We’re men (or women) and these things happen.”
This is why bull fights matter. This is why Teahupo’o, when it really works, matters. Because life is wild and fierce and bitter and ugly and beautiful, too. But only because we know that sooner or later the closeout will get us all.
