Mr. Commissioner, you need to be kneeling on a prayer mat, wearing a yarmulke, with a huge golden cross around your neck while chanting Buddhist hymns. Photo: Instagram/Kieren Perrow
Kieren Perrow is a great guy. Actually, I don’t personally know him, but everyone says he’s a great guy. When he was on tour every surfer that ever surfed against him in a heat, win or lose, said he was a great guy. He’s also smart, a smart surfer, and a hard worker. When he won the 2011 Pipe masters, The Inertia called him a blue collar champ. These traits were, I’m guessing, a big part of his selection to be the (ASP) WSL’s first commissioner.
And Kieren is a good commissioner; he’s out there on the webcast every morning, checking the conditions when he could send someone else do it for him. Far from the camera, so we’re told, he spends his nights hunched over forecast charts trying to get heats in the water at the best time and get surfers surfing more. With a record of a balls-to-the-wall approach to his surfing and an all business attitude to his job as commissioner, it looks like the WSL made a smart choice putting this guy in charge.
So far, the 2015 surfing season is going quite badly for Kieren. The Goldie and Bells events were wave deprived, West Oz showed great promise with amazing surf in the Box during the first heats but ended up running the final in (huge) mush on main break. Rio–as if Rio isn’t bad enough on a normal day–was flooded with sewer and ran without a backup site. What about Fiji? I know it’s hard to call a heart shaped island surrounded by perfect waves in the south pacific “lackluster” but the 2015 Fiji pro was just that. It was… nice. J-Bay was the first event of the season to somewhat resemble its usual self. Even when it’s onshore and crumbly, Supertubes is exciting and the competition got even better with three consecutive #superheats in the water. And then the shark thing happened.
While it seems like Mick’s heat turned boxing match, brought unprecedented attention to competitive surfing and the WSL, it also forced them to face difficult issues like: athlete safety and the possibility of dropping J-Bay from the tour (Please WSL, don’t do it!).
The commissioner can’t be blamed for these events. As surfers, we know more than most that no one controls the ocean, its waves, or its sharks. A chain of events like this year is some serious bad luck. Was Kieren cursed by a Brazilian witch after the Medina incident in the Gold Coast? Or is it the collective negative energy of WSL haters complaining about tennis match conditions and 30 minute heats? Maybe Kieren took an unknowing piss on the head of a sacred sea turtle in some obscure Indo line-up. One way or another, this smart, nice, hardworking guy needs to clean his aura, pronto!
Think about it: Surfers have been hurt in Teahupoo almost every comp. Jordy probably lost a good chance for a title run with those broken ribs a few years back. That’s just one reason why, before going anywhere near the “End of the Road” Mr. Perrow, you need to pull your spiritual shit together! Don’t wait to see a witch doctor on the island; don’t even set foot in Tahiti before getting your chakras taken care of. After Mick’s miracle save, you, Mr. Commissioner, need to be kneeling on a prayer mat, wearing a yarmulke, with a huge golden cross around your neck while chanting Buddhist hymns or something. You need a guru, a shaman, a Native American chief to smoke a peace pipe with, a spell, a potion, an amulet, maybe a peyote trip… whatever you think might help. You’re in California now for the US open, so spiritual things should be easy enough to come by.
There has to be some serious cosmic re-alignment before the event at Tahiti starts. The signs are already there: A perfect swell is now hitting Teahupoo, just before the competition. The same thing happened before almost every event this year and we know how that turned out…. With the injury list growing I am calling upon the WSL commissioner from these electronic pages: Go and get some serious spiritual healing before anyone else gets hurt!
Oh, and Kieren. If you’re busy, you can do the whole cleansing after the VANS us open, that thing is cursed anyway…
