Surfing's Forever

T HE NE X T B E S T T HING T O B E ING A B A D B IL LY /

THE NEXT BEST THING TO BEING A BAD BILLY

OCT OBER 20I2 ISSU E 505 VOLUME 10 OF 12 AU $10.95 NZ $11.99 INC.GST

O C TO BE R 2 0I 2

T H E G R AS S I S ALWAYS G R EEN ER I N S O M EO N E EL S E’ S ER A.

D O YO U S U F F E R F R O M D E C A D E E N V Y ?

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SURFING FOREVER

S O M E S U R F E R S H AV E H E L D U S C A P T I VAT E D F O R D E C A D E S .

WORDS BY KIRK OWERS

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urfing’s hot centre has always revolved around the young and the reckless. Everyone from Mark Richards to Jordy Smith has generated mass excitement upon arrival. Young bloods push performance levels to mind-boggling heights and underscore surfing’s image as a youth sport. But youth in ascendency is an old story endlessly repeated in any field you care to name. The big story for surfing right now isn’t about Generation Next. It’s about a bunch of sun-damaged, middleaged hoons who refuse to slow down.

In February this year the best surfer in the world turned 40.

There’s no getting around it: surfing’s alpha male is a bald, middle-aged, Floridian golfer. Forty-year-old world champs occasionally turn up in other sports but generally ones that can be played whilst seated or drinking pints. Real athletes engaged in physically demanding sports almost always peak in their twenties. Not only is Slater not slowing down, he’s damn well improving. And he’s not alone.

Nearly 40% of the men’s elite tour are in the over-30 club, including six of the top 10 (after Fiji) and 41-year-old Taylor Knox. The injection of new blood and the constant raising of the bar each year would suggest that most are still improving. Mark Occhilupo, who won his world title at 33, is intent on requalifying and after a blazing performance at Margaret River, he just might. If he does he’ll celebrate his 47th birthday on tour.

Sunny Garcia might even join him. The 2000 World Champ recently signed a five-year deal with Carve and is not done with the contest singlet despite recently becoming a granddad.

In the big wave arena age has even less bearing on performance. Laird Hamilton, 48, continues to excel in 50ft surf, as does Garret McNamarra, 45, and Carlos Burle, also 45. Tom Carroll and Ross Clarke-Jones are still hellmanning around the planet, while the line-ups at places like Sunset Beach are consistently dotted with snowy-haired elders. Likewise, Brad Gerlach has lost none of the panache, in or out of the water, that made him one of the most engaging pros of the ’80s. And then there’s Derek Hynd. Derek Hynd! At an age when men from less fortunate cultures are known as the recently deceased, he’s charging throaty desert barrels … without fins or a hearing aid.

Clearly, the age barrier has been bulldozed and it has implications for every surfer. It undermines the industry-fed notion that surfing is a youth sport. It challenges the idea that surfers peak in their late twenties. It adds 10 years to the life of a pro career. And it takes away a bunch of very good excuses for the surfer who’s beginning to pudge up and slow down. I caught up with a few senior shredders recently and pressed them for tips about aging disgracefully well.

SLATER IS A GENERATIONAL CHAMELEON; HIS SUCCESS IS A DIRECT CONSEQUENCE OF HIS ABILITY TO EVOLVE AND ADAPT TO NEW ERAS IN SURFING. AT 40 HE STILL DOES THIS MOVE – THE CARVING 360 – BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE. SWILLY

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LEFT: TH ER E MIGH T BE A WR IN K LE FOR E V E RY D EC A D E SP E N T ON TOU R B U T TAY LOR K N OX S TILL H AS PLE N TY TO SMILE A B OU T. B OS K O AB OVE : AT 41 TH ER E ’ S N O S TOP P IN G TH E S U R FE R TH EY C ALL C AP TAIN A ME R IC A . TAY LOR , P OS S IB LY C ON TE MPLATIN G A N AN K LE TA P ON B R E TT S IMP S ON AS TH EY SP R IN T U P THE B E A C H . A S P /K IR S TIN

S W E AT YO U R B A L L S O F F Kolohe Andino wasn’t even born when Taylor Knox qualified for the world tour in 1993. This year will mark Taylor’s 19th lap of the globe and the 41-year-old will be the oldest tour surfer in the sport’s history. Knox had his best tour result, a fourth place finish, at the age of 30 but his erratic contest showings have never really reflected his abilities. Asked whether the Taylor of today would beat the Taylor of 10 years ago there is no hesitation from the man himself.

“Oh, for sure. I’m still learning and still getting better.”

Of course Taylor has to say that. He has to BELIEVE that if he’s to beat these new-fangled rotation kids with their supple limbs, forgiving joints and spongy, new-car-smelling brains. But is it true? If you accept that the performance level increases every year on tour then just requalifying demands continuous improvement across the board. After the Gold Coast this year Shane Beschen assessed for Surfline that Knox is throwing the tail around more as he gets older and that he is in fact surfing better than ever.

So let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.

A professional athlete – a surfer no less – getting better at 41! Just how rare is that? Super rare, according to sports scientists. French researchers recently examined the careers of hundreds of athletes to find out when they hit their peak. Over 11,000 performances were analysed for the study which found that, in general, a physiological tipping point is reached at the age of 26. For swimmers the peak happens

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much sooner at 21 (vale ancient Thorpey). The study also looked at a broader range of sporting data and found that the mean age for setting a world record is 26.1. Surprisingly, even chess players hit their peak at 31.4.

Up until fairly recently surfing stats would have fit neatly into that study. World titles were won by surfers in their mid-twenties whose careers were over a few crowded years later. Curren retired at 27. Carroll at 32. Pottz at 29. So what’s changed? “It basically comes down to just not accepting it when people say you’re over the hill at 30,” suggests Taylor. “I feel like I got ripped off with Curren and Potter. To watch them a lot longer would have been really sick but they were more or less told that they were done in their thirties. Occy was a big part of the push for changing all that. He really pushed back the age barrier. And now of course there’s Kelly.”

Occhilupo’s astonishing comeback in his thirties and his world title at 33 (a record at the time) was a turning point. It demanded a reassessment of the performance peak of a pro surfer and encouraged the surf industry to value their older stars. Tom Curren signed a five-year deal with Rip Curl in 2005 at the age of 41. Billabong stood

by Occhilupo until he made his unlikely return. A three part rematch of the two ‘80s stars in 2010 was partly a nostalgia trip but also an acknowledgment that both still surf crowd-pleasingly well.

Often we explain away these performances by labelling our best surfers “freaks”. In the case of Slater, who has a double-jointed back, this may be partially true. But mostly it’s wide of the mark and, I suspect, mildly insulting. Occy didn’t peel

his arse off the lounge, shed 34 kilos and win a belated world title because of some sort of genetic abnormality. Just as Knox isn’t beating kids young enough to be his offspring because he’s a part of an alien master race. So what is the secret to longevity?

“For me it’s a combination of things,” says Taylor. “Being healthy when I was younger; watching what I eat; exercise and yoga have all played a part. I did a lot of yoga in my mid to late twenties and that has definitely helped me maintain flexibility. I was right into Bikrim yoga – that’s the one where they heat up the room super-hot and you sweat your balls off. All that physical stuff is important but a lot of people put that ahead of what they’re feeling on the inside. I’ve been doing meditation for about 10 years now and I’d say that’s the key reason I’m still on tour.”

Knox practises a discipline called Kelee meditation which focuses on achieving stillness of the mind. He practices a short session most mornings and evenings. “If your mind is calm your body is calm,” he says. “If you’ve got stuff racing through your head all the time then you’re out in front of yourself and your body tends to tense up. I find I just don’t surf as good unless I’m really in the moment. Buddha called it Big Sky Mind and meditation is a good way to reach that stillness. I’m not really into new-agey stuff and when a friend put me on to Kelee I turned it down for a year. Eventually I tried it and realised: this is something that makes sense. This is something that works. I wouldn’t be sitting here today talking to you without it that’s for sure.”

NEVER TOO LATE TO LEARN. TAYLOR INSPIRING US ALL TO GROW WINGS. BOSKO

A BACKHAND SNAP MIGHT BE STANDARD SURFING FARE THESE DAYS BUT THERE IS STILL SOMETHING UNIQUE ABOUT THE BODY TORQUE AND AESTHETIC APPEAL OF OCCY TURNING HARD OFF THE TOP. SWILLY

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S T R E T C H YO U R B R A I N Old age is someone 15 years older than you, some crusty old bugger once observed. In other words it’s relative and it’s touchy. When I ask Derek Hynd how comfortable he is with getting old he asserts that he isn’t. “Can’t say that I am getting old. I’m getting on sure enough, but I’m doing shit now that I never dreamt of at 18.” Few would doubt the latter half of that statement. Hynd is smashing not only his own performance levels, he’s become the king of the finless movement at 54.

There is also a case to be made that Hynd is right about the other thing. That he’s not getting old. Watch him bottom turn at J-Bay roar up the face and go into a controlled 30m drift and he resembles a teenage punk smoking tyres in a stolen car. More recently he’s been up to mischief in the North West desert: getting rotten drunk, riding about on car roofs, charging heaving reef breaks sans fins and stirring up admiration, condemnation and confusion at every turn.

“It does remind me of being a grommet again,” says Hynd of the friction free trip. “That’s precisely the feeling only with tweaks of deeper appreciation after the passing decades. A lot of it is the appeal of getting back to the beginning and working the track that many a young Hawaiian was blazing until the fin came to be.”

Hynd has no plans of returning to the fin in the immediate future. “Not until 10 years has

passed. The happy factor doesn’t even come into it as much, not that it isn’t huge fun. Most fun I’ve ever had. Losing friction at speed has a feel to it that kind of blows me away every time.

So, yep, I might not go back.”

Other observers have suggested that surfing finless is merely a way for good surfers to handicap themselves so they can sidestep a slow and inevitable decline. This theory would explain why surfers of a certain age start turning up at the beach lugging twinnies, single fins, SUPs and other weird and wonderful craft. It’s the need to go backwards so we can keep going forward. I ran it past Derek. Again, it’s not that simple.

“It’s not continuous improvement but the mistakes lead to the leaps,” he says. “It’s also a trip that feels private because it’s like a sound that keeps getting better to the senses. It hasn’t been drowned out after six years. Free friction is still fresh. Most days I can go on a trip of my own making with the exploration factor still years from being done and in surfing today that’s not a bad nook to be in.”

Whatever you make of the finless thing there is no denying that it is incredibly difficult and that Mr Hynd is incredibly good at it. And that, in your middle fifties, is a remarkable achievement. In fact it’s the type of feat that is attracting the interest of neurosurgeons and researchers who are studying the aging brain. Sorry, the brain that is “getting on”.

Up until recently it was believed the old saying is true for humans as much as canines: you can’t teach old dogs new tricks. But more recent studies have found that you can – it just takes a bit of prodding. Not only can the human brain continue learning new things as it traverses middle age but there is evidence to suggest that the brain gets better at recognising the central idea or the big picture as it gets older. The trick is to build a healthy brain by feeding it new ideas and tasks.

One way to do that is to challenge the assumptions you have worked so hard to accumulate while you were young, says the health editor of the New York Times, Barbara Strauch. With a brain already full of well-connected pathways, adult learners should “jiggle their synapses a bit” by confronting thoughts that are contrary to their own, she suggests. “We need to challenge our perception of the world. If you always hang around with those you agree with and read things that agree with what you already know, you’re not going to wrestle with your established brain connections.”

It is recommended that you stretch your brain by pushing it out of its comfort zone. Learn a new language, take a new route to work, listen to new genres of music or, in our case, ride a completely different board from time to time. It doesn’t have to mean going finless at Gnaraloo, it just means pushing yourself so you don’t get caught in a rut.

LIKE A ROCK STAR THAT ADAPTS TO EVERY DECADE, DEREK HYND IS A MASTER OF REINVENTION. LESS IS MORE WHEN IT COMES TO HIS RECENT OBSESSION WITH FINLESS CRAFT. SLOANE

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FIND THE TIME By now you might be wondering how the fitness regime of a well-paid professional surfer or the design peccadilloes of an individual like Hynd applies to your own crammed life. Who has the time to master a board with fins let alone one without? Down here in the real world the biggest factor that will determine how well you will surf in your forties is how much time you have to surf in your forties. And the two biggest levers that will determine this are likely to be your job and your family life. Get these right and you can look forward to holidays on the Indies Trader with your teenage kids. Get them out of whack and you will taste misery over 20 courses.

Sadly, unlike the single fin, babes who will mind your towel and fetch you a Chiko Roll on cue are not coming back any time soon.

Likewise, wives that enjoy holidaying at Desert Point or are happy to mind your offspring while you hunt tubes in the Western Sahara remain in short supply. Most married surfers negotiate surf and family time via a complex series of checks and balances that would make solving the European financial crisis looking comparatively simple. Or they get divorced and move to Sumatra.

Jobs are a little easier. Firemen, cops and ambo drivers have got it made. Four days on, four days off. With night shifts and holidays factored in, some find time to squeeze in a second job as a surf guide in Indo or Fiji. Mining jobs are also recommended, as is making your fortune on the stock exchange. At the very least try to land a job that enables you a flexi day when it’s cranking and enough bucks for a decent surf trip every other year.

Still, the grisly truth is that no matter how much time you spend in the ocean and how well you look after yourself eventually your body betrays you. Cells die off, muscles shrink, organs malfunction, bones lose density, cartlidge, hair and patience all thin out. Old injuries reoccur, your senses become duller and your brain misfires. You start forgetting where you left things: your keys, your wax, your libido.

Eventually, silver hair sprouts from your nose, your back and your ears waving tiny white flags of surrender.

There was a time when surfers dealt with this by utilising surfing’s version of the Zimmer frame: the malibu. Today malibus are more often the domain of nimble-footed hipsters and older dudes are more likely to be riding beefed up Thrusters. The simple explanation is that the Thruster itself is getting on. Underlying that is a growing awareness of health and a boomer obsession with staving off old age for as long as possible. For surfers that means surfing good for as long as possible.

Simon Anderson, 57, spent a chunk of last year jetting around the world to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the Thruster. His gapyear-style travels took him to California, Nicaragua, New York and France as well as the Goldie and Bells. The year before he was in Rio De Janeiro for a Masters event and in the Mentawais on his first proper surf charter. As anyone who saw him blazing on the Goldie earlier this year will testify, he’s still surfing at a high standard. What you don’t see is that to maintain that level he has to work at it more than he did when he was at his peak on tour in the ‘80s.

“I wouldn’t want to overstate it but it is a challenge,” says Anderson who has been dry-docked for months after tearing his hamstring off the bone. “I struggle with a cycle of fitness and injuries. Sometimes I’m feeling pretty good and loose other times I might have a problem with an area of my body. It might be a sore hip or ankle trouble. With my diet I basically had 55 years of eating what I wanted, as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted. That led me in the end to being overweight and not really surf-fit. I’ve changed that. I watch what I eat, I certainly don’t drink too much and it’s a conscious effort these days to live a healthier lifestyle.”

Anderson points out that shapers are now designing boards that are more suitable for older surfers and that the line-up has become a more accepting place. “Surfing’s evolved and become more of a mature activity. Just because you’re old doesn’t mean you’re not welcome any more, like maybe you weren’t so much in the ‘60s/’70s/’80s.

Older surfers still get respect if they keep themselves in reasonable shape and are still surfing all right. They’re not made to feel unwelcome at their local break.”

While older surfers – famously at Anderson’s home break, Narrabeen – used to gain respect by tying younger surfers to telegraph poles and weeing on them, in today’s world of inverted values they gain respect by not tying younger surfers to poles at weeing on them.

And they still get their waves! “Absolutely – there’s still a group of

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LUKE EGAN MIGHT GET MORE PRESS FOR BEING PARKO’S MENTOR THESE DAYS BUT HE HASN’T FORGOTTEN HOW TO THROW THE FINS. BOSKO

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THREE YEARS SHY OF HIS SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY SIMON ANDERSON IS STILL SLAYING WALLS AT HIS HOMEBREAK, NORTH NARRABEEN. BUGDEN

older surfers who do well at Narrabeen. There are always younger guys that are dominating but they don’t have the patience that we do. When the waves are good we don’t mind sitting out the back and waiting. We’ve got the experience, knowledge and generally longer boards so when the sets do come we get ‘em.”

There is case to be made that surfing has lost some of its appeal by becoming so conservative, family friendly and peopled with such ancient, sun-wrinkled specimens. But the problem with surfing as a hell-raising, dope-smoking, sex-on-a-stick youth movement was that it had an abrupt used-by date. When you came of age and started paying bills and raising kids you had but two options: burn out or fade away. Today there’s a third option: surf with dignity, peer respect and grace into your sixties and beyond. Yes, beyond.

It’s a story for a different time (and a different publication) but if your forties and fifties are about staying healthy so that you can surf a reasonably high level than your sixties and seventies are about staying surfing so your health can stay at a reasonably high level. Studies have shown that surfing has all kinds of benefits for the senior shredder: physiological, mental, social and even spiritual. Anderson puts it more succinctly: “Why would you stop? It’s better than going to the gym.”

And if you think there’s a fair few grey nomads in the water today – wait until the age time-bomb has kabombed across the western world. It’s due to land in about 2020. Further ahead, consider the influence of Kelly Slater at 60. How many of us will still be taking inspiration from his anti-aging legacy. Who knows – the way things are going he could still be on tour. ! x

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