Anybody missing the World Surf League? No, me neither, which is strange because before Covid I was a total tragic, up all hours of the night watching the world’s best face-planting in sandy closeouts in Peniche or Hossegor, or waiting for the noisy, smelly freight train to push a perfect wave their way in the middle of the California food bowl.
Now I’m cured. I don’t care what the top thirtysomething are doing in their gap year, and I’m not even remotely interested in the reruns they’re showing constantly on the WSL site, don’t want to be reminded of that year Kerrsy got robbed at onshore Lowers, or even the time that the shark bumped Mick at J-Bay and he had to split the purse with Julian. Most of the really good times I can recall associated with the surfing world tour predate the WSL, and some of them even predate the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP). I’d rather close my eyes and drift back over all those unbelievable free surf days, from Morocco to Mexico, Noosa to Nihiwatu.
But then a magazine in the UK asks me to reminisce about the greatest surf contest I ever witnessed (live, not webcast) and I briefly consider writing about the first Stubbies Pro at Burleigh Heads in 1977, which really was the greatest contest ever, and not just because the surf pumped offshore and overhead for every single heat until the final, but just in time I remember that this happened long before the Brit editor was even born, and I can hear him stifling a yawn. So I decide instead to bring it forward a couple of decades and write about people he might have heard of, from the era in which I briefly went to the dark side as event director of the ASP World Tour events the Quiksilver Pro France and the Quiksilver Masters World Championships.
These were positions I held between 1999 and 2003, but I decided to focus on the turbulent period that began when at Quiksilver we managed to outfox Billabong for the rights to stage the only French WCT event, starting in October, 2001. We started preparing for this as soon as we won the contract, in May or June, but every second week I had to fly to Ireland, where we were preparing for the World Masters, to be held in late August.
It was a frenetic time but we managed to pull off a successful event in Bundoran on the West Coast, which we celebrated with what the Irish quaintly call a pub lock-in. I flew home to Biarritz the next morning, nursing a hangover and fretting over the fact that I had three weeks to build four contest sites and production facilities spread over 40 kilometres of coast, but these concerns paled into insignificance that afternoon when I was woken from a recovery nap with the news that two planes had ploughed into New York’s Twin Towers.
9/11, 19 years ago today, changed everything. We kept building, planning, hiring, but every day I saw the Chinese whispers in my inbox. A week later ASP president Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew phoned me from Coolangatta. “Mate, the Americans want to stay at home and they’ve carried the vote.”
I was in disbelief. The European leg of the World Tour was being cancelled because of a terrorist attack in the United States. It was crazy logic, but something I’d get used to over the next couple of years. As a result, Floridian CJ Hobgood, a great surfer who didn’t win an event in 2001, was crowned world champion, and we all looked forward to a saner 2002.
In 2002 I spent a lot of time in Morocco, gearing up for the next Quiksilver Masters, to be held in the port town of Safi in early 2003, but I was also on the Gold Coast, Bells and Trestles to see Andy Irons on the march, and as the Quik Pro France drew closer, we knew it was going to be Andy’s year. And then along came Brazil’s Neco Padaratz, a ferocious competitor who was later thrown off tour for using performance enhancers.
In Hossegor for the final against Andy, Neco was fired up and unstoppable. In hindsight the event was a solid argument for drug testing, but at the time it was just so exciting. With Andy needing another win, the tour moved down to Mundaka, Spain, and we sailed down for finals day, en route for Morocco on the Indies Trader.
It was Andy’s time to shine, and this time he buried Neco in the long lefts. And then it was party time in the town square, Andy’s shout, one tantina after another.
The European leg was a huge hit that year, rescued from a debacle in Portugal by great surf and stellar performances in France and Spain. But by January politics had derailed the surf tour again. With George Bush threatening to invade Iraq over “weapons of mass destruction”, my bosses in the States told me in no uncertain terms to get their brand out of Islamic Morocco quick smart.
I had to cancel the Moroccan Masters, and that was about it for me as a world tour event director. Fun while it lasted. Mostly.
