Press Pause - Exhilarating Short Film about the Riders of Reunion

Are you ready to hold your breath?  Don’t be fooled by the start with Just a Gigolo playing as the surfers relax – this is just a short preamble to what is to come!  This awesome and exhilarating short movie was filmed from January to July 2010 in Reunion Island.

This place, remarkable for its surfing, is a French island with a  population of just under a million people and is located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar and about 200 kilometres (120 miles) south west of Mauritius. 

A number of surf locations were used, including St Pierre, La Tortue, Roches and Les Brisants.

The film, breathtakingly shot by Ian Mourier features a number of world class surfers.  Here you can see  the likes of Maxime Huscenot, Christophe Allary, Charly Chapelet, Laury Grenier, Olivier Marimoutou, Hugo Dubosc and Adrien Rapp among others.

This is more than a tribute to the riders who were filmed here.  It is hoped that this film, which was created for the Zot movie festival which is dedicated to extreme sports, will attract more and more surfers to Reunion Island.  Looking from this footage that job has been well done.

It may not be as easy to get to as Hawaii but it looks worth every cent of the air fare.

Andy Irons – Surfing Great – Found Dead in Hotel Room

Andy Irons was held in high esteem.  Considered by many in the surfing community to be the best in the world he has been discovered dead in a hotel room in mysterious circumstances.  He had been in Puerto Rico to take part in a surfing competition when he fell ill and withdrew himself from the event.

He stopped off in Dallas on his way back home to Hawaii and it was here that he was discovered yesterday.   This has plunged the surfing world in to mourning as not only was he a popular figure on the competition circuit he had been incredibly successful.  Over the course of two years between 2002 and 2004 he had won three world titles consecutively.

Irons learned to surf on the dangerous and shallow reefs of the North Shore in Kauai in his home state of Hawaii.  As well as the three world titles he won three Quicksilver Pro France titles (03-05) and twi Rip Curl Pro titles (in 06 and 07).  On top of this were the 19 elite tour victories and, most recentky in September, he won the Billabong Pro in Tahiti.

The events leading to his death are a little cloudy but it has been reported that he was suffering from Dengue fever.  This is an acute febrile disease which is transmitted by mosquitoes and occurs in the tropics.  Since its discovery in the eighteenth century it has been looked upon as a very serious and life-threatening condition.

Irons spent a few days in Miami after returning to the US from Puerto Rico and he was on an intravenous drip to combat the fever.  However, he had wanted his own Doctor to treat him and so had signed himself out of the hospital in which he was staying.

He did not make a connecting flight from Dallas to Hawaii and so checked himself in to the hotel in which he was discovered death the next morning.

To add a further mystery, a Hawaiian newspaper has reported that methadone was found in the hotel room, hidden inside a container for a drug which can be obtained on prescription – Zolpid.

World in Sport would like to express its condolences to the friends and family of Andy Irons, certainly one of the contemporary greats of the surfing world.

This first clip was filmed just two weeks before Andy Irons' death.