Jordy Smith is flying the Glenwood flag high as he surfs the World Surf League’s biggest, cleanest and most financially lucrative breaks.

Feature photo: Jordy Smith (at age 20) expertly executing a lightning-fast rodeo clown in the northern summer of 2009, the move invented by the American surfing legend Kelly Slater 10 years earlier at the Pipeline Masters in Hawaii. Brian Bielman

The Durban born and bred Glenwood Old Boy and Red Bull athlete…

…is currently lying in 5^th place on the WSL Championship Tour and qualified 2 years ago for the first-ever Olympic Games surfing competition; the Covid-delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which will hopefully still take place this year.

The World Surf League is currently undergoing the Australian leg of this global event and 31-year-old Jordy has ended in second place at the Margaret River Pro, south of Perth.

In 2012 Jordy’s Bending Colours garnered a 2012 Surfer Poll Movie of the Year nomination.

In 2013 Jordy had a year that saw him cement his place as one of the most avant-garde surfers in the world and included the release of Now Now which became a massive YouTube hit.

Watching Now Now it is uncanny how Jordy seems to instinctively feel the wave – the board glued to his feet – WATCH AT 9:25 FOR THE 27-SECOND SEQUENCE and then from 11:40 at Ballito and then the incredible 10-second sequence from 13:00 to 13:10.

 

Injury plagued Jordy during late 2014 and much of 2015 but came back with a bang in 2016 to gain finish in the runners-up spot on the World Rankings. In 2017 Jordy ended 4^th in the world then 5^th in 2018.

Just 2 years ago, Jordy was in with a real chance to win his first world champion surfer title but an early exit in the final event (in Hawaii) of the Championship Tour meant he had to settle for 3^rd place in the final world standings.

* When the talented Jordy was a young boy in Durban he faced the choice of focusing on either soccer or surfing… and we know the outcome of that decision.

• At the age of 17 Jordy was crowned ASP World Junior Champion and, still in his teens, he qualified for the pinnacle of the sport, the elite ASP World Tour.
• In his rookie year competing with the best of the best surfers on the planet Jordy finished second in the world title race, this when he was barely out of his teens.

Covid ensured that the entire WSL CT was cancelled, so here’s to Jordy and the 2021 year.

This Glenwood Old Boy is very much a family man and describes happiness in the simple yet essential terms one would come to expect from a unique, vital human being who spends so much time with the elemental energies of nature.

“I like to think that I am easy to be with and happiness for me is when I am healthy and with my wife, family and friends.”

Good on you, Jordy, a true Glenwood Legend.

#greenmachine #greenisgold #surfing #wsl #worldtitle