Just four years ago, Iain Campbell was more or less running under the radar outside of the South African bodyboarding community. Now, standing on the sand at Nazare, watching him getting chaired up the beach to celebrate his first ever Association of Professional Bodyboarders World Title, everyone knows exactly who he is: the hottest ticket in bodyboarding.
“I think it really blew a lot of people’s minds,” he says about the European win streak that put him on top of the bodyboarding world. “Just having those pumping conditions at El Fronton.”
South African bodyboarders rip. They are tough, they have balls, they surf isolated places and face sharks. With Dre Botha, Jared Houston, and now Iain, the Saffas tied the Aussies in World Titles. Neck and neck, bru.
Campbell, being carried off the beach after locking up his first World Title. Photo ctsy of Iain Campbell
“A really good [South African] crew began to form that were all pushing each other, it started to progress so quickly.
It was just straight up froth,” he says about the progression of South African bodyboarding. “It didn’t matter what boards you rode or who you were sponsored by or what the story was, we were all there to have a good time. And, everyone was having a good time. It was just friendly competition and it escalated into guys winning multiple South African titles because that groups ended up challenging each other so much.”
Legendary South African bodyboarders like the Cockwell brothers, Alistair Taylor, and Billy Thiel served to inspire and motivate the Saffa new school.
“It was just constant competition in whatever you did. [With Billy’s crew] everything was a competition. I mean, if you sat down at dinner it was the first person to finish eating. You can drink that many beers, I can drink more than you, that sort of thing. That kinda got bred into us. Maybe not the drinking side of things, but just the competition or rivalry.”
In fact, Billy Thiel is the reason Iain Campbell got into bodyboarding in the first place.
“Billy had a surf school, and he was actually the coach for our bodyboarding team,” he says. “Billy pretty much started the South African bodyboarding scene over [in Hawaii], and I think it was pretty loose as well. I mean, they had a good time for a long time. The Cockwell brothers, Dean Seppings, Neal Stephenson, Phillip Rodriquez – so many crews used to go over, making a name for themselves in the shorebreak more than anything else, or Billy was.”
Fast forward to this year, and Iain had found himself on an epic journey. In July, he wasn’t feeling well and decided to visit the doctor. The diagnosis was colitis, a chronic, inflammatory bowel disease that causes inflammation of the digestive tract.
“Yeah. A lot of people don’t know about that. It was a pretty tough thing to get over. I lost a lot of weight. I didn’t really know what to do. I was in Cape Town and so I didn’t have my family and very close friends to talk to. Half the problem with Colitis is stress, so you have to manage your stress to help you out inside.”
“The problem I had was I wasn’t talking about my issues. It was building up inside and I was actually getting sick from it. I had to learn a lot in a very short space of time. Eventually, I went to these biokineticist and this guy, Cristaan La Roux, who practices with the guys I train with (and he) also had the same issue.”
“It was easily the most difficult thing I had to go through, maybe in my life. The thing was, I was feeling so good in the water. I wasn’t losing energy but I was losing all this weight, so now I am three kilos lighter on the same equipment I had before. I don’t know, maybe it helped a bit. My surfing improved for some unknown reason. Maybe I was trying to push my body to the limits. You just go and hit those sections and don’t really care about it.”
“The way it happened and the way it worked for me instead of against me was massive. It was a huge challenge for me and that is where I learned a lot about myself. I am also on a chronic medication that I take and that managed the whole thing and sorts me out.”
Campbell also credits a lot of this year’s challenges turned fortunes to the support from people around him – back in Cape Town, as well as his girlfriend, Rosie, and her family.
“That is a huge part of the competitive side that I think a lot of people really know [already], and I heard it back when Moz won his first world title. You need that support crew or you can’t win world titles. There is no way. If there is no one there that can lift you up when you are right at the bottom, you got to have those people who are gonna say, ‘Well, why don’t you give it one last push? Just stay at it for one more.’”
“I was pretty surprised to get back to the airport with the world title trophy and have Rosie and her whole family [there],” he says. “They have been super supportive this year. Just to have everyone there and have the moments we shared at the airport is more than any crown you could wish for. My mum was there in the airport in Cape Town even though she lives in Durban. She was so stoked. It was really, really cool to have that day. I wish I could have had my brother and my dad there too. But it was a really cool moment that I will remember for a long time I am sure.”
He even credits some of the simplest gestures from people back home as something that kept him on track for his first title.
“My stepdad sent me one message after a heat like, ‘Well done. Well surfed. It was tough conditions.’ Even those small things – you don’t realize what actually manifests from that. That was my base. I had my teachers and my trainers and my coach. But they can only help to a certain point. Family and friends – the push from those guys get you through 100%.”
“I had my teachers and my trainers and my coach. But they can only help to a certain point. Family and friends – the push from those guys get you through 100%.” – Iain Campbell
So Iain Campbell has had one hell of a year. But technically, he (and 2017) is not done yet. Just when you think you are getting to know Campbell, another layer reveals itself. It turns out he has a movie project brewing called Chasing the Southern Sun.
“I have collaborated with a filmer named Michael Veltman,” he says. “People see me as this kind of competition guy doing events. I kinda had this feeling that if I won the world title people would be like ‘Well, he can win titles but that is it.’ And that really started to piss me off. I am not just this guy who turns up to contests and just goes from broke and sometimes he wins and sometimes he doesn’t.”
And so it turns out that was a lot of the motivation behind Chasing the Southern Sun, a story of chasing a world title and the inevitable return home. “I know there are a lot of guys who put clips together and clips are cool,” he says, “but you need to get it down to a more personal level. I really don’t think we are doing enough to promote ourselves as bodyboarders, so this is where that whole video idea comes from. I wanted a self-funded project to show people the training and all the support I got.”
So, with his first world title in hand and a new film on the way, Campbell is rounding out a big 2017. He’ll send off the year from Hawaii and “start off with a bang,” as he puts it, before turning his sights on 2018 and his life back in his adopted home.
“I think I am going to try and find something super new and different over here in Cape Town- up the west coast – do a crazy mission or something. There is a lot more to be searched and discovered over here I think. That is what I want to do. I got some big plans for next year.”
