Alex Gray North Shore Afternoon Delight

Alex Gray and some friends have some Afternoon Delight on a small day on the North Shore. To keep up with Alex be sure to check out his new blog, Turkeymelt. We think that soon the afternoon delights on the north shore will include 8 foot Pipe and massive outer reef bombs.

Afternoon Delight from Turkeymelt on Vimeo.

Vote for Ezekial Lau for Innersection TV

Let's help one of the hardest working and best surfing high schoolers in all of America, Ezekial Lau, make it for this year's Innersection. Go to innersection.tv and vote for Ezekiel's video in the number one spot of the top 10. Ezekial Lau has a huge future and we can't wait to watch it!

France Roadtrip with Nate Yeomans, Austin Ware & Friends

Pro surfers traveling in Europe on "The Grind" sure have it rough. Check out this video of another "brutal" day for friends and Body Glove Surf Team riders Nate Yeomans and Austin Ware with Dylan Graves, Pat Gudauskas and Dane Gudauskas. Rough day surfing, drinking wine and enjoying all that France has to offer. Video from the3tree.com.

Sur La Route Part 1: France from Jerry Ricciotti on Vimeo.

Nate Yeomans US Open Photos

Nate Yeomans had a solid start in his quest to win the US Open of Surfing today. He scored two solid scores to advance to round 2 in the tricky and small Huntington Beach conditions. Here are a few shots before, during and after his heat. All photos by Alex Shea.

Love the full suit in Huntington in August

The air that sealed the deal in his heat

Everyone loves a nose ride in Huntington- Single Fin practice must have helped

Big smile, shakas and mustaches after the heat winLegend David Nuuhiwa rocking his Body Glove Spring Suit at the US Open

Anthony Walsh Vimeo Video Channel

Body Glove's Anthony Walsh is one of the best barrel riders on the planet. If you have any doubt please take a look at his Vimeo Video Channel. Anthony is all over the globe from Australia to Hawaii to Tahiti to Ireland and even to a wave pool. Check it out at http://vimeo.com/anthonywalsh. Check out the below video from the North Shore this winter as proof.

Update hawaii swell journal no.4 from anthony walsh on Vimeo.

Also be sure to vote for Anthony for the new GoPro Innersection Comp open for voting now at http://innersection.tv/video/299.

Jamie O'Brien signs with Body Glove!

We are excited to announce that professional surfer, Jamie O'Brien, has signed a 3 year contract with Body Glove for apparel and wetsuits. Jamie is hailed as one of the best surfers in the world, a Pipeline Master Champion and has recently showcased his talent in what many consider to be one of the best surf movies ever made, Who Is J.O.B.? Billy Meistrell, owner and VP of Body Glove said, "We're all stoked to sign Jamie O'Brien and add him to our team. It is great to have a full package rider that we believe will sync well with our brand. We feel he embodies our love for the ocean and will really fit well into our family here."

Jamie signing his contract in Body Glove's board room.

Jamie O'Brien shaking hands with owner and CEO Robbie Meistrell.

Jamie shaking hands with owner and VP Billy Meistrell.

Walshy re-signs with Team Body Glove 2011

Anthony Walsh and his family have been spending time at the Body Glove house. Anthony has confirmed that he is going to be a full package Body Glove team rider for 2011 and into the future. " In 2010 Anthony has always been able to put himself in the right place at the right time. Incredible images of Anthony in the barrel have resulted. We are extremely excited that Anthony is part of the team," said Scott Daley, VP of Marketing.

Anthony Walsh and Crystal Dzigas with son Damien.

Body Glove Surf Team Photos from Hurley Pro at Lower Trestles

Unless you have been living under a surf rock or have been too busy surfing your favorite waves during the last run of swell you probably saw some of the incredible footage from the Hurley Pro where they scored 3 days of pumping south swell Lower Trestles in San Clemente, California. Event winner Kelly Slater put on quite a show but so did the Body Glove Team of Dusty Payne, Gabe Kling and Luke Stedman. Here are a few shots from an incredible week. All photos by Mike Balzer!

Luke Stedman Double Grab

Luke Stedman Warm Up Surf

Luke Stedman Mid Heat Power Gouge

Gabe Kling Happy to Make It Back on Tour for the Lowers Lefts

Gabe Kling Big Airs Could Not Quite Take Down Event Champion Kelly Slater

Gabe Kling Doing the Lowers Rock Hop for a Warm Up Surf

Dusty Payne Putting it on Rail in his Round 4 Heat

Dusty Payne Free Surf

Dusty Payne Was Ripping during the Expression Session

Dusty Payne Man Hack

Dusty Payne, Austin Ware and Nate Yeomans at US Open of Surfing

Body Glove surfers Dusty Payne, Nate Yeomans, Mike Losness, Gabe Kling and Austin Ware were all down surfing and living it up at the US Open of Surfing. Here are some shots from the week. All photos by Mike Balzer

Dusty Payne

Dusty Payne

Dusty Payne

Nate Yeomans

Nate Yeomans

Austin Ware

Austin Ware

Body Glove at the US Open of Surfing

The huge US Open of Surfing is going on all week down at the Huntington Beach Pier in SoCal. The crew at Hurley, Nike 6.0 and Converse have taken the event to the next level and the surfers, brands and the industry in general are amped for the biggest event in the United States. Body Glove surfers Dusty Payne, Gabe Kling, Austin Ware, Mike Losness, Nate Yeomans, Luke Stedman and Erica Hosseini are all in the main event and most start surfing today. Dusty Payne is also Surfing All-Stars Expression Session next Sunday with 10 other of the best surfers in the world. This event has everything: amazing surfing, skateboarding, art, fashion shows, BMX, Life Rolls On Expression Session and bands including Tomorrow's Bad Seeds and Weezer. Body Glove will be in the mix all week and we hope to see you down there. If you can't make it to Huntington Beach you can catch every heat and every event online at www.usopenofsurfing.com or on their free iphone app.

Anthony Walsh Straddie Sequence

Check out this sick sequence of Anthony Walsh making a no handed drop at South Straddie on the Gold Coast of Australia

straddie sequence from anthony walsh on Vimeo.

For more info on Anthony Walsh check out his blog at http://anthonypaulwalsh.blogspot.com/ and his Vimeo video site at http://vimeo.com/anthonywalsh

Anthony Walsh Staying Busy

Australian charger Anthony Walsh has been staying busy even as he recovers from a sickness that kept him from joining the crew in Fiji for Drop Zone Fiji. Check out the below clips from Backdoor and a ridiculous slab in Ireland.

Anthony Walsh Backdoor from Andrew Oliver on Vimeo.

Riley's Ireland October 09 - Walshy from Slut on Vimeo.

Holly Beck, Chandler Parr and Friends in Fiji

Body Glove surfers Holly Beck and Chandler Parr joined friends Mary Osborn, Jennifer Flanigan and Kaley Swift on an epic surf and dive trip aboard the beautiful Tui Tai in Fiji. The girls surfed their brains out, spent time under water, did some stand up paddled, explored waterfalls, drank kava and hung out with the amazing Fijian people. Check out the great Surfline Feature story with captions by Holly Beck.

Body Glove Surfer of the Month: Ezekial Lau

Body Glove surfer of the month has to be Hawaiian Ezekial Lau. Zeke made Hawaii sports history last week at Huntington Beach, Calif., during the 2010 NSSA championships. The 16-year-old from Honolulu won the High School Varsity Men's Shortboard title, becoming the first national interscholastic surf champion in Kamehameha Schools' 123-year history. Lau also won the NSSA Explorer Men's crown.
He followed that up with a win at the Rip Curl GromSearch at Kewalos where he took the Boys 16 and under title, the H20 Overdrive Maneuver of the Event and the Dragon High Heat of the Event.

Not a bad summer month for the kid. Congrats Zeke and we look forward to seeing more!!

Holly Beck is Very Busy

Holly Beck updates us direct from Nicaragua. Holly is very busy. Enjoy!

Happy Memorial Day weekend! I suppose in many places that signals the start of summer. For me, it's the last week of a three month stay in Nicaragua. I head home June 4 for a Body Glove promo at Sport Chalet in Huntington Beach on the 5th, a UCSD alumni surf contest at Blacks on the 6th, then a week of catching up with friends and family before heading off to Fiji to film Drop Zone 2 - a dive and surf documentary - with team Body Glove on June 15, then back down to Nicaragua after that.

The last few months have been awesome and I'm sad to leave. Hopefully the surf and weather are cooperating and you're beach-bound this weekend. It's raining and onshore where I am, so here are some links to check out if you haven't seen them already...

I'm doing a women's surf and yoga retreat in Nicaragua July 17-24 and have a few more spots to fill. If you or a friend is interested, check out the promo video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp46GNpEEAM or go straight to the website. www.surfwithhollybeck.com

The episode of The Lazy Environmentalist featuring me aired recently. You can view a few clips from the episode on their website: www.sundancechannel.com/lazy. Scroll down the list of videos on the right til you find Lazy Surfer - and keep in mind they told me to act more skeptical so that i could be convinced in the end)

I wrote a story on my trip to Haiti for a European women's surf mag called Cooler. It will be out next month, but they did an online interview with me that can be viewed here:
http://cooler.mpora.com/features/interview-surfer-model-good-soul-holly-beck.html

We started construction on our big 2 story, 3 bed/2bath house that we'll end up renting out down here. So far only the foundation has been laid, but it's an interesting process. I made a little explanatory video and posted it to my Facebook page. It is viewable here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Holly-Beck/125160486073#!/video/video.php?v=396796651134

Another GoPro video of my dogs and I playing in the surf (me getting tubed, them just splashing in the shorebreak) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_dKIJIZ9tg

And if that wasn't enough, Team Body Glove came down last week to shoot photos and video of the 2011 swimwear. The weather and surf only partially cooperated so we spent some time exploring and driving through rivers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u1AkbH59CE

Enjoy the start of summer!
: )
Holly Beck

Body Glove Surf Team in Nicaragua

Erica Hosseini- Look out Reef Girls

The Body Glove Team of Cheyne Magnusson, Erica Hosseini and Maria Del Mar have been down in Nicaragua hanging at Holly Beck's house surfing and shooting for some upcoming boardshorts and bikini campaigns. Below is an up to date post from deep in Nicaragua from Holly Beck.

First let me say we scored really fun waves this morning and got some great shots. We split up the team to maximize our productivity. Cheyne and Rob Giley went to check out a super shallow slab for tube shots and Mike Balzer, Scott Smith, and the ladies took a panga out to a big open water left reef. We all scored. It was a couple feet overhead but pretty mushy. Great for photos with a big drop and a solid turn but not at all scary.

Maria Del Mar Getting her fashion shoot style

Day one the beach out front was solid and hollow and good. The next day we went to a smaller playful beach. It was waist to chest high and mushy, but good for turns and photos.

Yesterday afternoon we went on an adventure to go check a bunch of other spots which involved some cool local scenery and off-roading, tide pool shell hunting, etc. We have been surfing a ton and getting some great shots. I hope you enjoy the first couple behind the scenes shots here. There will be a lot more coming.

Cheyne Magnusson Doing His Thing

Dusty Payne Photo Gallery on ESPN

I guess the boys over at ESPN are down with the Body Glove Surf Team. Check out this great photo gallery of Dusty Payne surfing all over the world at http://espn.go.com/action/surfing/gallery?id=4873047&image=1.

Gabe Kling Interview on ESPN- Mr. Kling's Wild Ride

Great article and interview with Gabe Kling by Jon Coen of ESPN Action Sports. To see the full article go to http://espn.go.com/action/surfing/news/story?page=Gabe-Kling-interview. We have copied the text of the interview below. Gabe talks about his big win at Lowers, trying to get back on the ASP World Tour, his beloved Jacksonville Jaguars and the oil spill in the Gulf.

Photo by Rachel Tanner

Qualifying for the ASP Tour is one of the biggest moments in a competitive surfers' life. Conversely, a career-detouring injury is one of the worst. Just imagine the emotional roller coaster that Gabe Kling, aka "Thor" has been on in the last few years.

Kling first qualified at the end of 2006, the first East Coaster in some time to scale the fence. The celebrations that year at Surf Expo in Orlando were legendary. But that season saw so many sub par waves, he told me it was like surfing "two WQS tours" at the end of 2007 and Gabe didn't have the results on either to stay in the game.

Kling put his head down in 2008, trained hard, and fought his way back on tour for the second time in three years. But following the 2009 Quiksilver Gold Coast Pro, Kling sustained a Medial Collateral Ligament tear and Medial Meniscus tear in his knee as well as a Distal Tibiofibular sprain in his ankle at the O'Neill Coldwater Classic in Tasmania. While the tour went on to a banner season of waves around the world, he was relegated to his St. Augustine couch and a physical rehab regiment. There were hiccups in recovery, and Kling wasn't back in action again until the Triple Crown. But Kling got his bearings at Sunset and even downed Kalani Chapman in his first Round at the Pipe Masters. He applied for an injury wildcard, but it wasn't granted.

Last week, he won the Lowers Nike 6.0 Pro and is in the midst of a battle to qualify for a third time. How does one athlete handle so many ups and downs? A lesser man would cave, but not the good-natured Jacksonville Jaguars honorary captain and power gouger, Thor.

How did you win at Trestles without doing 25 air-reverses?

I don't know. It seemed like you were going to have to pull something crazy to win the event. I just focused on surfing smart heats, tried to get the best waves and do my thing. I had some close heats that went my way. It was just a great event for me.

You won the final by a pretty fair margin, but the semifinal heat against Andy Irons was tight as a mosquito's butt. Can you talk us through that heat, including your 7.13?
That heat with Andy was crazy. He broke his board and didn't have a backup with him and he ended up grabbing someone's board, which he hadn't ridden before. It took him a while to get back out and right away grabbed a mid-6, and I still didn't have any good scores yet. I was stressing pretty hard at that point. The waves had shifted to rights and I grabbed a little set wave and got a medium score that ended up being my backup.

I got that 7.13 on a little bigger right. The wall held up through the inside and I got to link up a few turns. It came down to the last minutes and Andy picked up a small wave and ripped it, and he didn't need too big of a score. I was sitting out the back waiting on them to announce it for what felt like hours. After they said he didn't get it I was just losing it -- so stoked! There weren't many waves in that heat and I'd say I got pretty lucky in that one.

You were injured during the winter of 2009 at the Coldwater Classic Tasmania? I know you worked really hard to rehab. You were up for an injury wildcard this year. What was the ASP's reasoning for you not getting that?
They gave it to Neco (Padaratz) and Luke (Stedman.) Both were ranked in the Top 16 when they were injured.

Do you think the wildcard they saved for Andy Irons would have been your slot?
I don't know. It's over and done with and I'm not going to dwell on it. There were a few others going for it also, so who knows how that would have panned out. A.I. has wont three world titles. It was his spot.

I hear that the whole St Augustine crew is getting ready to bomb the Jaguars/Chargers game in San Diego this September? Are you in on that?
I think so. I'd love to go to that game! I like the Chargers. A lot of my friends are big charger fans and I watch a lot of their games. I loved when they beat Peyton Manning in the playoffs and he cried. (laughs) That was great. If I go to the game, I'll have my teal on though of course.

Of course. You guys even go crazy for the NFL draft. Where were you this year for that?
I was at home. It's just an excuse to have a party really. Zander (Morton) had one and everyone built wizard staffs and cooked out. We had never heard of (Tyson) Alualu when the Jags drafted him, but I think he's going to be a beast! (laughs) The year before I had a party at my house and I was a mess. I stayed pretty sober at this one because we were going fishing in the morning, but it was fun.

Have you been in Florida since the oil spill? What are you hearing about the effects on the shoreline?
It sucks. I can't believe it. I haven't been home since it happened. I've read about it, and been keeping up with it. It's devastating and I don't think we have seen the worst of it yet, unfortunately. It looks like the Gulf is going to be ruined for years, and it could be headed for the East Coast if it gets in the Gulf Stream. Hopefully they can figure out how to stop it from spewing oil soon. It's pretty sad.

You've done some training with Ian Cairns in the past. Are you still on that program?
No. I wasn't training with him this contest. I have worked with him quite a bit and got a lot out of it. He was training with the juniors at the event and I chatted with him between a few of my heats, though.

How will the ASP mid-season shakeup affect you personally? Do you think you're in a good position?
I don't know. I don't think they are taking any new guys. They are going off the World Tour ratings and cutting it down to 32. They said there is a possibility for a wildcard and Josh Kerr and I will be candidates for that. We will see how everything goes. I'm not going to stress over it. This result helped my chances for the end of the year if nothing else.

Alex Gray Solo Mexico Surf Trip

Alex Gray kept the spirit of the Best Winter of surf in a long time alive by heading south of the border to Mexico for the season's 1st south swell. He left his Body Glove Vapor Fullsuit Wetsuit at home in favor off a Vapor Surf Shirt Top and a pair of Volcom boardies. Instead of hitting the road with a huge crew he headed across the border solo this time, scored some sick surf at some warm water right points, did some daredevil dining and got punked by the best video game player in Mexico who looks a lot like Alex. Check out the Surfline feature at www.surfline.com/surf-news/mexico-solo_42327/ with some great commentary from Alex.

Nate Yeomans Interview on Surfline

Nate Yeomans interviewed by Surfine during the waiting period for the Bells contest talks about the wave, life as a rookie on tour, equipment, Occy and his stacked first round heat with Dane Reynolds and Andy Irons. Check it out at www.surfline.com/surf-news/rookie-nate-yeomans-talks-about-one-of-the-trickiest-waves-on-tour_42231/