Lima Does Brazil Proud At Bells
by Sean Doherty

Two weeks ago I sat having lunch with Joel Parkinson at the Peace Kitchen, the organic, celestial diner in the main street of Torquay.
“Mate,” offers Joel, “you wouldn’t even recognize Coolangatta now. There’s hardly a soul there. All the Brazilians who were there for the contest have blown out of town.” Cooly – home to more itinerant Latin American surfers than anywhere else on the planet outside of Latin America itself – had resembled Carnivale during the Quiksilver Pro. “There’s hardly a wicked van there now… and you know where they’re all headed?” He laughed. “Here. I guarantee.”

“Mate, even the Brazilians don’t like it down here,” I retorted. The cold, the sleepiness, and the 1500-mile drive deter all but the hardiest travelling surfer from venturing as far south as Bells. Why would you ever come down here in April when the Gold Coast is firing and subtropical and still full of chicks in bikinis a month out from winter?

Parko and I finished our Jamaican coconut curries in our recycled cardboard bowls and said our goodbyes. I walked across the street to the bakery and there they were. Four swarthy Latino gentlemen, debating in Portuguese how many bread rolls they could buy with a five dollar note, three of them sporting Quiksilver Pro 2009 merchandise.

Most of this transient Brazilian population, it seems, has stayed, because the noise when Silvana Lima won the final of the Rip Curl Pro this afternoon shook loose rocks from the Bells cliff that have been lay undisturbed since the Paleogenic Era.

It was a similarly historic win for her today. No Brazilian, man or woman, has ever won at Bells before. As a rule the place doesn’t look favorably on small wave theatrics, it rewards gutsy railwork and big turns. And this is why Silvana Lima won today. She breaks every stereotype you might have about Brazilian surfing, and how she hasn’t won a World Tour event until today is anyone’s guess. She’s got the biggest turns on the girls’ tour, and I suppose it’s only her inability to package these together into good heats, and package five of these good heats into a contest that have stopped her.

Today was a case study in how to beat Steph Gilmore. The good news for the other girls is that it’s doable. The bad news is that most of the factors that contributed to Steph’s downfall today were completely out of her opponent’s hands.

While attending an awards night last night Steph fell sick. Shakes, fever, nausea. She went home early, and her wan complexion said it all this morning, and while the Happy Gilmore smile was still there on her face today, it was purely cosmetic. To use an Aussie euphemism, she was “sick as a brown dog”.

But to her credit she didn’t play it up today, soldiering on, and she didn’t wheel her illness out as an excuse after she’d lost the final. She’d almost been pinged in the semis, scraping through on a 2-point ride against Kiwi rookie, Page Hareb, but looked like a world champ in her semi on her way to dismantling fellow rookie, Sally Fitzgibbon.

But by this stage most of the fight had drained out of her. Silvana had a nine and an eight behind her in the final before Steph knew what hit her, and by then you could almost see her energy leeching out into the Southern Ocean. In the dying stages she had a chance to paddle out to sea and chase the nine-five she needed but lay there prone, almost resigned to the fact that Silvana had it.