Welcome to the 31st Edition of The Bodyboard Report! 🤙

The Beast has woken up.

El Frontón has been doing what it does best, the juniors are getting knocked down to size, and the world's best men are working their way towards the water.

But while watching all this unfold, something is missing, or, more accurately, someone.

This week we've got a queen who disappeared without a goodbye, a king who can't legally ride most of his own coastline, and the latest from Gáldar and the APB.

On stranger tides it goes when a few stories that seem to have nothing in common can end up on the same stretch of volcanic rock.

Oh, and thanks for the beers last week. Cheers for sticking with me 30 x over.

Call the bartender, if you like, ‘casue I need the carbs. Scored clean, pumping 4ft Outerpool all day long with no one out, no BS.

Why I’m writing this at 10pm. Guess the rest of Mossel Bay works during the day…

👉 Boogie Beer

Here’s a question for you: Who was the last woman crowned at El Frontón?

If your answer is “nobody”, you’re not alone, but that was a swing and a miss.

From 2017, the Frontón King had a women’s division. They called it the Frontón Queen.

Brazil’s Isabela Sousa won the first one in 2017. Tenerife’s Teresa Miranda took it in 2018. In 2019 it went to Alexandra Rinder, born in Las Palmas, who also happens to be the youngest world champion in the history of the sport.

Then came 2020. Pandemic year and the demise of both my surf shops. The Frontón King was the only sporting event held in Gran Canaria during the global Fauci horse sh*t health emergency. The final battle was Teresa against Alex, the defending queen.

Teresa dropped into a long, deep left, scooped hard and came out clean the other end. The judges gave her the perfect 10.

“El primer 10 de mi vida,” she said. The first 10 point ride of her life.

It was the highest scoring ride of the entire event at that point, including the men. The same edition saw local kid Borja Granados knock out Pierre Louis Costes, so it was hardly a quiet year on the slab.

The build up to 2021 still listed a women’s division. The event’s own history page lists queens up to 2020. After that, nothing.

This week there are 128 spots at El Frontón, of which 80 are men, and 48 junior men.

Teresa going for gold 👇

Which brings us to the man defending the crown this week.

Amaury Lavernhe is a 2 x World Champ (2010 and 2014) and a 4 x Frontón King (2015, 2016, 2018 and 2025).

He’s from Réunion Island, and he trains in the Canary Islands.

Surfer Today once called El Frontón his “newly adopted home break.”

Adopted. That word is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Because back home on Réunion, riding a bodyboard within 300m of most of the coast is against the law.

Amaury in red back in 2016 👇

On 19 September 2011, former French champion Mathieu Schiller was bodyboarding off Saint-Gilles with more than a dozen others. He was attacked by several sharks. He fought one off with his board, but tragically a second one got him and his body was never recovered.

He was 32 at the time and it was the 4th shark attack on the island that year.

Mathieu had founded a surf school at Boucan Canot. The attacks kept coming. Surfer Mag puts the number at 30 people attacked, of which 11 were fatal in the 8 years after 2011.

It reminds me of the time in 1998 / 99 when South Africa was dubbed “The Killer Coast” shortly after Morey team rider and globally ranked No. 4, Neal Stephenson, and a total of 9 waveriders over a few months were attacked. At least one such encounter was fatal, if I recall correctly. Scientists speculated that the El Niño effect influenced the migration patterns of the shark population.

In July 2013 the Réunion Island “surf police” banned most water sports. In April 2017 bodyboarder Adrien Dubosc was killed at Pointe au Sel, and the ban stayed.

Réunion had 1,600 licensed surfers when Mathieu Schiller died.

By 2015 there were a mere 400, which is a tragedy in its own right.

The ban never really went away. It just gets signed again every February.

The current order runs from 16 February 2026 to 15 February 2027. No surfing, bodyboarding or bodysurfing within 300m of the shore, with a few exceptions: the lagoons, supervised zones, experimental zones, and a handful of netted beaches that are only open when the nets are up.

One of those netted beaches is Boucan Canot where Mathieu Schiller ran his surf school.

On 1 August 2026, France (Réunion is a French territory, if you didn’t know) published a decree that makes riding in a banned zone a proper offense.

The old fine was capped at €38. Now it’s €68, €45 if you pay quickly, €180 if you pay late, and up to €450 if it ends up in front of a police court. Yikes! Take your chances with the sharks or the pigs…

So the wave that made Amaury the finely tuned machine he is today can cost you up to €450 to ride at home. Hold your beer bucks, I’ll be starting a collection soon…

I’m not going to pretend this one is simple. People died. Families lost sons. Kelly Slater once called for a daily cull and got a reply from Sea Shepherd’s Paul Watson. Scientists still argue about whether a 2007 marine reserve helped bring the sharks in.

What I do know is that a generation of Réunion kids grew up looking at a coastline they weren’t allowed to ride. If you want to see how the locals live with it, Ziggy Cavier dropped a video earlier this month that walks through how the Réunion nets actually work.

👉 Reunion Nets Explained + Pumping Barrel Session

So this week we’ve got a queen with no throne, and a king with no home break.

It’s quite peculiar how both stories end up at the same volcanic rock in Gáldar.

APB put out a new press release this week.

The Association for the Progression of Bodyboarding has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Bodyboarding International Officials, or BIO.

BIO started in 2002, when a handful of international judges set up an independent union for bodyboarding judges. A banner to stand under, a standard way of scoring, and a place to argue about best practice without a rider’s mom shouting from the beach.

They started building judging standards in the late 1990s. In 2015 BIO became a registered company in Australia, and together with Surfing Australia it developed the International Bodyboarding Judging and Officiating Course. The International Surfing Association (ISA) offers that course overseas.

Then there’s the rulebook.

Through 2 men, Karl Gol and Craig Hadden, BIO rewrote the International Bodyboarding Association (IBA) rulebook. That rewrite became the basis for the rulebook of the old Association of Professional Bodyboarders (the 2014 APB). And it’s the foundation of the rules the IBC has used since 2019.

I went digging on Karl Gol, because names on rulebooks rarely get a face.

He’s one of the original Newcastle bodyboarders. He founded the Merewether Bodyboarding Club and was its first president. He won the Australian U18 title at Dee Why in 1986. At the first pro am at Cronulla Point in 1984, he beat Hawaiian legend Daniel Kaimi in his very first heat.

He picked up the judging pen in 1994, alongside Craig Hadden. In 1998 he built the IBA’s Level 1 judging course. In 2010 he wrote the IBA International Rule Book. These days he’s in Tasmania, where he has been president of the Bodyboarding Association of Tasmania since 2007.

Because take a call from McCall is even cheesier…

The quote in the release comes from Jamie McCall, CEO of the APB.

“Fair, consistent and well-trained officials are the foundation of any credible sport,” he said.

He’s right. He’s also a name you won’t find on APB’s founders page. That page lists Mike Stewart (President), Teza McKenna (Treasurer), Ricardo Estupiñán (European Operations), Art Fisher (Legal) and 5 x World Champ Isabela Sousa.

Jamie was elected CEO this year. One of the best ways to hear from him right now is Episode 41 of The Closeout podcast, from 18 August, where he talks about his background and plans for the role.

The most recent episode also includes great conversation with Teza McKenna.

👉 The Closeout

For more on the APB and the good work they do, visit the 18th edition 👇

The Beast woke up on Saturday, and the waiting period runs until 31 October. The organisers select the 6 best competition days within that window, which means the forecast gets a big say in the schedule.

Here's where things stand.👇

The event opened with waves reported up to around 3 metres, sunshine and a crowd gathering on the rocks. The men's Round 1 got underway, with all 80 riders in the opening round.

France's Robin Legros made a strong impression with an air reverse off one of the ramps, putting himself into the conversation for the Red Bull Banana Challenge. He's won it before, so he knows his way around the fruit aisle.

The junior men's competition also got started, with 48 riders representing 11 countries.

The junior repechage brought the first eliminations, while Chile's Cristóbal Tobar landed a backflip that scored 9.00. He'll be hoping that puts him in the Banana Challenge conversation too, after opening last year's event with a 9.50.

Defending junior champion Louka Zaninotto advanced, as did last year's runner up Alberto Pérez and Peru's Lucciano Campos.

The conditions and tide eventually forced the organisers to call it a day for safety.

Day 3 just concluded while I’m writing this.

Gotta say, the next generation are impressing! 💪

👉 Catch the DAY 1 Highlights here

👉 Catch the DAY 2 Highlights here

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