Sharks, real sharks and gentle men get together in X-Over
From near and far they arrived for perhaps the greatest multisport event since the Olympics. On Friday evening, as the sun eases down on the St Francis Links, the champion of the fourth edition of the Oakley X-Over Challenge will be anointed. If the sharks don’t get them first.
Two sharks were spotted off Jeffreys Bay this week during the Corona JBay Open. One, believed to be a mako, breached apparently while local surfing superstar Jordy Smith was in the water.
The other, which stopped the competition, was a white shark — not a great white, said one wag, as it was just a baby. Babies get hungry.
On Thursday morning, more than a dozen of SA’s current and retired superstars took to Lower Point in Jeffreys Bay for the surfing leg of Oakley XOver. And there were three other kinds of Sharks in the water — John Smit, Butch James and Tonderai Chavhanga. None of them was expected to win the surfing leg, one of three disciplines in the competition. The others are mountain biking and golf.
The X-Over is a very different sporting challenge: a meeting of athletes sponsored by eyewear and apparel brand Oakley, a chance to laugh and joke and, yes, compete.
It can be deadly serious and deadly funny.
Who competes? Greg Minnaar, the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) downhill mountain biker, has taken a break from his incredible run in the UCI World Cup series for the fourth consecutive year.
Minnaar is 35 going on 18 — forever young, delightfully delinquent with natural humility. He is blessed with a talent that is sometimes hard to understand, thundering over rocks and roots and dirt and bumps at about 70km/h, surfing gravity like a wave.
He lives his off-track life the same way. He is helpful — just ask any Jeffreys Bay establishment about his willingness to help clear tables. In the absence of Bob Skinstad, who has had to cry off this year, he has been named honorary X-Over president.
Minnaar epitomises what X-Over is about: a shake-out with contemporaries from across disciplines. He will discuss the technique of a successful chokehold with Garreth McLellan, the Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter who goes by the gentle name of “Soldierboy”; consult with golfer Ruan de Smidt on whether a full Corona bottle is better than a raised tee on a par three; take lessons from Lance Isaacs, the superbike racer, on the finer points of adding up a golf score; and perhaps ask Butch James how he won the World Cup in 2007 (no matter how reluctant James is to talk of his part in that triumph).
Minnaar will roll into Jeffreys Bay with John “Coach” Comley by his side, who has been with the biking champion since his early racing days and watched him win in the World Cup in 2017.
Though, there are those damn sharks. Two years ago Mick Fanning, the Australian surfer, famously escaped an attack by a great white in the final of the Open. He was taken out of the water on Wednesday after another shark was spotted. He was shown images of the shark on Wednesday. It was not a baby.
“That is huge,” Fanning told the Australian Associated Press. “Look at that thing — that thing is a beast. At least they saw this one. I am glad they got us out of the water.
“Those things are just submarines. However long they are, the roundness of them as well … they are big, big beasts.… I don’t try to put myself in danger anymore. I think I’ve been in that situation a few too many times. But I feel really safe,” he said.
The X-Over is a time to pause and reflect, to laugh and remember, and to remind that the fire of competition remains strong in these athletes.
There will be a winner. It may be Minnaar. It may be Raynard Tissink, the defending champion. It may be James, a former winner.
But, the X-Over isn’t just about winning. It’s about sport and its wonderful ability to be the same and different at the same time.