In November 2010, the surfing superstar Andy Irons died mysteriously in a Dallas hotel room four days before his rival Kelly Slater won his tenth world surfing title. Slater wore a white wet suit and served as a role model for a generation of surfers. Irons, who was brash and cocky, wore black, and was the hard-charging, hard-partying rock star who called himself "the people's champ." These two represented the modern face of surfing. Slater's efforts to legitimise surfing as a sport with mainstream appeal culminated when he won his tenth world title, a feat that put him in the pantheon of sporting greats alongside Michael Jordan and Lance Armstrong. Still, the "story" was not Slater's win .but lrons's death and the controversies that surrounded it: the release of his autopsy report, the position of the family, and the attitudes of the sport and its sponsors toward lrons's problems and the circumstances of his passing. Breaking is a deep dive into the psyche of surfing through the breach created when Irons died. Brad Melekian covers business, competition, ocean and brain sciences, sociology, and, most important, the psychology of surfing.
He explores what happened when an oddball, esoteric pursuit pioneered by a cluster of outcasts morphed into i a fully formed sport, replete with a million-dollar international contest circuit and followers who ride the waves in search of answers that are never quite there. That includes Melekian himself, who surfs in Southern California, who as a journalist wrote the most widely read and hardest-hitting coverage of lrons's death, and whose own personal travails become a contrapuntal narrative to lrons's story. Their shared obsession illuminates, in what is sure to become a classic of sports writing, surfing's unique passions, gifts, and limitations.
- ISBN10 0374298726
- ISBN13 9780374298722
- Publish Date 1 August 2016
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Out of Print 18 May 2017
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 272
- Language English