“I want to go into the Olympics so I can make the
United States a better place!”
A cavalcade of superstars, including the man who
pioneered backside tube riding at Pipeline Johnny Boy Gomes, have
lined up to praise a tweenie from Oceanside, California,
after the kid fearlessly attacked one of the world’s heaviest
waves.
Uriah McDonald has been surfing since he was eight months old
although confesses he wasn’t able to spring to his feet then but it
was this early exposure to the ocean gave him the bug that he sure
hasn’t been able to shake.
Uriah, who swings under the handle @uriah_anchor, was recently
filmed taking on Tahiti’s Teahupoo, a wave that famously flummoxed
the otherwise brilliant San Clemente-based surfer Filipe
Toledo.
Toledo, you’ll remember, was in the running for a shock gold
medal at the Olympics, even clocking an almost perfect ride while
the surf remained small.
However, his hopes of glory were shattered when the surf got a
little bigger and Toledo threatened to reprise his famous
zero-point heat total there.
The world’s best surf contest
analyser, Scotland runner and foiler JP Currie,
wrote:
Three waves attempted, none critical or close, the highest
coming in at a 1.43.
He was roundly trounced by the committed Japanese surfer,
Reo Inaba, who deserved the victory regardless of Toledo’s
no-show.
Inaba charged and grinned throughout.
Even when he was ragdolled by the heaviest wave in the
world, he still came up smiling.
Toledo, by contrast, was locked back into his familiar
grimace, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world.
Ideally 24 hours in the past, posting an obscene number of
Instagram stories highlighting his waves from yesterday.
But pay for his hubris he did.
With all sincerity, I hope he is ok, because I can scarcely
imagine a greater swing from high to low. Yesterday, his demons had
been vanquished, silenced and sent back to that dark chamber in the
pit of his soul. Today, they are back upon his shoulder, wailing
and cackling into the shot blood of his eyeballs.
And I fear that when it’s all said and done, it won’t be two
world titles and some of the most dynamic surfing ever done that is
Filipe Toledo’s legacy, but simply a handful of waves he refused to
paddle for.
Uriah McDonald, meanwhile, is readying himself for Olympic
Glory, probs not LA, he’ll only be eleven, maybe Brisbane, when he
turns fifteen.
