true, been slacking a bit... with apologies

Post update.

I apologize with Daniele De Rossi. A (pissed off) italian reader sent me an email and pointed out that the Paraguay guy actually did hit him.
In the slow motion at minute 1:02, you can see the Paraguay guy lifting the front of his foot in order to hit De Rossi's left foot. He steps on De Rossi's left hill and De Rossi will fall a step after that. Quite a dangerous contact actually, since he could have tore his Achille's tendon.

That's one case in which the replay would have not helped much... at least if I was the referee!
Maybe instead of a hand held device in the hand of the referee, there should be a team of experts evaluating each case on a big screen HD tv on the side of the pitch.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As kindly reminded, I've been slacking a bit (surfing some) and here's the report of a couple of decent wave sailing days at Hookipa.
I'll start from Wednesday 16, Tuesday 15 coming up soon.

Don't really have a favorite, so I'll leave the chronological order, also because the one I kinda liked best was the first one anyway.
Laurent goiter.


Nico takes the Maui Surf Report logo high up. He's my best team rider, for sure.


Mark, mutant clew first.


Fireman Vince Steves.


Spanish sailor Anna Blanc bails out.


Mark.


Pascal.


Laurent.


Mark.


Yeah, let's put Griffin up too.


Pascal's body language seems to indicate that he wasn't particularly challenged by this wave.


Been doing some surfing as I was saying.
Standup is no problem, but regular surfing... oh boy. Even though I'm sure it is part of the problem, I'm not even going to blame the stiffness of my foot. It's just that after almost three months of not surfing you just suck at it when you try it again.
Tried Hookipa first and the patheticness of the attempt was mind blowing.
South shore was much better, but still far from what I used to be able to do.
Now. Should I be pissed off that I can't surf like I used to or happy that I'm finally able to surf again? The answer is too easy... bloody pissed off! :)

Jokes apart, being able to be in the water again is great.
Those little waves on the south shore made me completely forget about the standup downwinders and the July race, maybe will do a few more in the weekend, waiting for the new south swell to show up. Midweek should be good. Not as big as I first thought (gale winds weren't as strong as forecasted), but hopefully we'll see some head highers on the Lahaina side. Let's see how I do with those.

Stay tuned for the second wave sailing report and aloha.

PS. Oh yeah, Italy put all that hard training to use right away.
Seems like Daniele De Rossi will be selected as part of the Italian Diving team at the next Olympics. His interpretation was so convincing that even the Paraguay guy apologized thinking he really hit him...


There's one simple way shameful behaviors like these could be easily avoided by the FIFA: the use of replays. Even if not caught by the referee live, nowadays technology would easily allow the referee to review the action from many different angles on spot with a hand held device. NBA referees do that all the times (btw, yesterday's one was the worse final game ever!).
And even if the referee doesn't catch it at all, the day after the game a specialized team should review each game and when they spot something like this, they should issue a one year suspension to the cheating player. Immediately all cheatings would stop. That simple.

PPS. KP did this video of the first the of the Pistol River wave contest in Oregon.

Pistol River Wave Bash Day 1 from Kevin Pritchard on Vimeo.

Good job Samantha for organizing a contest that seems to have grouped quite a few sailors despite the cold water and cross on conditions.
Is this a sign that it's time for someone to try to organize a wave contest in Maui again? I think it's well overdue...