Shaun, Rabbit and I were invited to visit a surf club now located in the mountainside slums they call favelas.
It had been 30 years since my last trip to Rio de Janeiro Brazil, so I was very excited when I received an e-mail notifying me I was invited to compete in the Super Surf World Masters there last year. It’s been eight years since the last Masters event was held at Makaha. Well into my 50s now, surfing is still a huge part of my life. In my early 20s I spent seven years on the World Tour; there were good times and there were tough times, but most importantly there were friendships forged that will last a lifetime. I have recently seen some of the guys from the early years, but most of them I haven’t seen in a long time. As I pondered the invite list, I knew many of them would still be surfing extremely well. The following story details my experience in Rio last year, seeing old friends, and reconnecting with competitive surfing.
The Masters was broken down into two divisions – one was surfers from 35 to 49 years old. This bracket would be comprised of many former World Champion surfers, such as Mark Occhilupo [1999], Barton Lynch [1989], Tom Curren [1985,1986,1990], Derek Ho [1993] and 3 time Masters Champ, Gary Elkerton. Not to mention surfers like Shea Lopez, Luke Egan and Brazilian, Victor Ribas. This was a highly competitive division with several surfers coming fresh off the World Tour, combined with many highly skilled surfers from right here in Brazil. A trials event was held for each of our divisions, allowing two local surfers the chance to compete with the invitees. Those of us over the age of 50, we are being hailed as the “Grand Masters”, with names like Shaun Tomson, Simon Anderson, Michael Ho, Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew, Ian Cairns, Hans Hedemann, and Terry Fitzgerald, just to name a few.
One question that I was eager to answer for myself was, what has changed in professional surfing over the last three decades? I posed this question to Ian Cairns and he replied, “When you watch the World Tour surfers of today, the performance level is so much higher than what we were doing. I think it’s just a natural progression of time and equipment, but frankly I think the stoke is the same. I think some of the supreme optimism we had as early professionals that pro surfing could happen, has now been realized and proven true. Now it’s a large, global industry and surfers are making enough money to perhaps retire for life.”
Intrigued by Ian’s answer I then posed the same question to Shaun Tomson, and he answered, “Surfing is conceptually similar with speed, power, rhythm, aggression, style and imagination being the basic building blocks of surfing. But, now they are moving so much faster with single concaves that, this has really changed surfing in terms of speed, and the young guys are so amazingly acrobatic. Even us Grandmasters, compared to the Masters, they just move so much faster. Speed has opened up surfing into a whole new realm in terms of aerial maneuvers and they are just able to cover so much more distance on the face of a wave. The culture has become much more commercial, capitalistic and big business, not to say that it’s bad. The true spirit of surfing, the reason we surfed then and the reason we surf today is the same, we love it. We are lucky we chose a sport we can do forever, the longer we do it, the younger it’s going to keep us. Surfing has been a great ride and I still love going surfing.”
One of the dramatic changes that occurred within our sport is the quality of surf and the locations of the events worldwide. What is now called the “Dream Tour” has stops at some of the best waves in the world like Jeffreys Bay, Teahupoo, Cloudbreak and several others. Therefore, surfers are offered better opportunities to compete with quality waves. Another small change that has a large effect is scoring; only the top two waves count for each competitor. This forces a change in strategy from the earlier era when three, and sometimes five waves in the Final, would be tallied for a total score. The primary reason why this can be such a game changer, is because you no longer need to scramble to make sure you have three solid rides during your short heat, making fitness much less important. Some competitions today even allow the use of personal watercraft to help speed the surfers back to the lineup, giving them more time for wave riding and less time spent paddling. You can focus on getting two good waves, allowing you to be much more selective, while at the same time saving your energy. The criterion for the new scoring system is no longer based on length of the ride and the maneuvers, but is now really categorized by vertical hits, big power carving maneuvers and aerial moves. Nowadays, a competitive surfer can take off on a smaller inside wave, boost into the air, complete an aerial maneuver, and receive a high score; placing less emphasis on wave selection and more on high-impact aerial maneuvers. This is how the current top surfers want to be judged. My generation, on the other hand has always geared surfing towards riding a wave from beginning to end with all things in between being important.
The man-on-man format has been around since 1977, but the introduction of the priority system has taken away the wave hassling that previously occurred during competition and allows the surfers to focus on getting waves and performing. Personally, I like the new system more, because I never got enjoyment out of the cutthroat jockeying or hassling for waves during a heat.
Another huge difference today is in the boards. They are in general shorter, narrower, thinner and lighter than the boards of the past generation. These smaller, lightweight boards enable the surfers to generate more speed than we ever thought possible. This has opened the door for more creativity in the water. I would however, love to see the top surfers of today ride on the boards of the past. I’m sure they would surf them well, but nothing like they do on today’s boards.
