By Phil Jarratt
If you’re wild about Harry, you’ll already know that we shouldn’t get too excited just yet, but dare I say it, our boy is in contention for a world title again.
I speak of Noosa’s Harrison Roach, not only one of the most graceful longboarders in the world, but also a wizard on any form of surfcraft, and a great bodysurfer to boot. In short, a waterman par excellence.
And, although he’s often been ambivalent about competing at the highest level, preferring to surf perfect waves in remote locations anywhere from the jungles of Indonesia to the polar caps, last week at Sydney’s Manly Beach he slapped the competitor jersey back on and took out the first of three legs of the World Surf League’s longboard world tour.
The WSL’s tour structure has been chaotic at best throughout the Covid period, and this year’s longboard offering is no exception, having been cobbled together as late as March this year for a May start.
Harrison told Noosa Today he’d been in two minds about competing, but, in fact, he already had skin in the game. There was unfinished business.
Because of Covid cancellations, the 2021 world longboard tour was built on results that included the 2020 Noosa Pro, won by the veteran former world champ Joel Tudor, plus two events in California.
After a second placing in the Surf Ranch Pro, Harrison went into the second at Malibu needing to finish second or better to take his first world title.
He was on track to do exactly that when he met Britain’s Ben Skinner in the semi-finals. Skindog pulled off an unlikely win to rob Harrison of the title, which allowed Joel Tudor to become the oldest (47) world champion in surfing’s history.
Tudor later went on a social media rant highly critical of the WSL and received a suspension, meaning that world number two, Harrison Roach, would be the top seed to start the 2022 tour.
Last week in Manly, Harrison met Skindog again, this time in the final.
Confident and looking cocky in a spiky bottle-blond hairdo (“My partner Edie did it for a joke,” he explained), he paddled out into a difficult lineup and noticed his opponent had chosen to surf 200 metres up the beach.
“I thought, this’ll do me,” he recalls. The powerful Brit was never really in the hunt.
Last year, when he returned to Australia after his second at Malibu, or “first loser” as he prefers to call it, Harrison finished his literature degree while doing two weeks of quarantine in a Sydney hotel, finishing with a GPA of six plus.
He’d started out doing business but found his history electives were more his style and switched gears.
“As soon as I switched out of business I loved what I was studying. In a way I wish I was still studying. I learned so much about Australian history in an immersive way that you can only get through literature, because it puts you right there. And I love reading,” he said.
“Business was going to be useless to me, to be honest. Writing is something I’ve always loved, and you realise how crap you are when you study literature, but I’m still able to bring the skills I have developed into my role at Roark.”
Roark is the American-founded adventure brand that produces two collections a year of “clothing, luggage and trinkets – the artifacts of adventure”.
Harrison has been their key man in sales and marketing for the past three years, following a long and successful relationship with the Deus Ex Machina brand.
During his time with Deus, he specialised in putting together adventure videos in remote locations, with the emphasis on excitement rather than product placement.
At Roark he was able to up the ante, with the Arc of Aleutia video, surfing the most remote parts of Alaska’s freezing Aleutian Islands archipelago.
This week he’s off in New Zealand, filming at little-known breaks on the South Island.
“I’m taking on more of a marketing role at Roark, content creation and branding. I don’t know if this is what I’ll be doing in the future but right now it’s a good way to get paid for doing all the things I love doing,” he said.
“I wouldn’t be making a living if all I did was surf. In one sense I’m a glorified model but I’m also helping build the brand by using what I’ve learnt as a surfer and as a student.”
I have to ask the literature graduate what he takes for reading matter on his travels.
“When I travel I have access to all my reading materials on my phone so I can read it in a tent in the dark. What’s on there now? A book called Bridge of Clay by Marcus Zusak [Aussie YA] and Homer’s Iliad.
“Plus a bunch of sci fi fantasy because it’s a guilty pleasure of mine. I knew nothing about the Aleutians until I went there, but I read an awesome book by the naturalist who was with Vitus Bering on his ill-fated voyage of 1728.
“I also learnt a bit about the Indigenous story, which is similar to here, with conquest and dispossession.
“But nothing really prepared me for the place, it just helped put it in context. You’re there in the middle of the Pacific with the Bering Sea above. This is where the storms are generated that bring huge waves to Hawaii. It makes you feel insignificant.”
I also have to ask how long-term partner Edie feels about his dangerous adventuring.
“I’ve been in some dangerous situations on my trips, mostly when I was young and dumb, but now I try to put that to the back of my mind. And the risks we take are always considered, and you have each other’s back.
“Edie would be upset if I wasn’t doing the things that interest me. She understands who I am.”
In August Harrison Roach will be back on the world title trail, in California for the US Open at Huntington Beach. Then it’s Malibu in October, where he believes he can seal the deal and bring home the title.
“I want to win a world title and that’s it. I believe that longboarding has a future and that’s exciting for some people, but I’m 33 in August, so I’m thinking about what’s next.”
