Watching a dribbly onshore longboard event at Huntington Beach is not exactly riveting – although it may be a cure for insomnia – but Kai Ellice-Flint, one of my very favourite longboarders of the modern era, lit it up to claim his maiden WSL world tour event.
Long-haired, laidback Kai, 29, who now calls Byron Bay home after stretches on the NSW Central Coast and Sydney’s northern beaches in his formative years, has been knocking on the door of major success for a few years now, pretty much since traditional longboarder Devon Howard reinvented the WSL judging criteria and declared: “Kai’s surfing is the criteria!” And watching him surf at the Noosa Festival this year, where he took out the Logger Pro and finished a close second in the LQS qualifier, I could only agree with Devon.
Now, after taking down current world champion Taylor Jensen (another favourite of mine) in the first event of four on the world tour, he’s a quarter of the way to his first world title, which would also see a welcome return of the trophy to Australia for the first time since our own Harrison Roach won in 2022.
Actually, Kai probably surfs more like Harrison than anyone else in the top echelons of longboarding, which means he brings a point of difference to every heat he surfs, even in junky HB. But the road ahead is not an easy one. You’d certainly back him to go close at Bells Beach in September, particularly if there’s some size, and the machine at Surf Abu Dhabi should be to his liking but he didn’t perform well there last year. Then there’s the crumbly long rights at Surf City El Salvador, and since watching how he milked crumbly one-footers at Huntington, I’d back him there too.
The final at Huntington was a dogged affair, with two big men trying to make one-footers look good. The lead swung back and forth but Taylor seemed to be playing catch-up, even with a couple of great extended nose-rides, but Kai’s graceful drop-knees and high-line trims served up a 7.5 to seal the deal.
Kai, whose mum had flown from Australia to watch the final, was emotional in his post-heat interview: “To win here is just incredible. As a grom, you look at the US Open like this is such a big event. I’m super grateful. I just felt like I needed to push hard for this the last six or nine months. Coming up against Taylor in the final is difficult, and you have to dig deep.”
And dig he did!
Who’s coming to the ‘Bu?
Since Californian surfers started flocking to the Noosa Festival in the early 2000s, a special relationship has grown up between the Noosa Malibu Club and the Malibu Surfing Association, partly because we both have a world class break called First Point and we both host a fun-packed annual celebration of longboard surfing.
My own connections with the ‘Bu crew only strengthened during the three years we lived in California 2004-7, and back in Noosa and back in the role of festival director, I revisited the Malibu event in 2009 with a couple of the old boys and watched Noosa’s Matt Cuddihy take out the open title. In 2010 the Mal Club invited me to lead a full team to the MSA Teams Challenge in 2010 and I was delighted to accept.
The MSA event that year was somewhat quirky but what a hoot! It had become so popular that organisers had to load up the heats and shorten the time for each, which meant that you had 15 minutes to do battle with perhaps eight other surfers, and the last heats of the day were held in complete darkness, MSA judges with torches wading in to the shallows and calling their scores back to the pencillers. It didn’t help that the expected swell didn’t arrive until the Sunday and when we arrived for the prelims early Saturday there was barely an ankle snapper running down the point.
But oh what fun we had! The Mal Club team had two vans and drivers, me and Matt Cuddihy with Rosie Locke for backup, and a crew of the best young longboarders in Noosa, including Zye Norris, Jacko Winter and senior champs Matt, Rosie and Josh Constable. The seniors squad included yours truly, Darryl Homan, Own Norris and the late Carl Tanner. Our guest surfers in the teams event were Hawaii’s Reno Abellira and Malibu legend Denny Aaberg, and still we only managed 13th. But the swell came up for finals day and we spent a week buzzing around California surfing the famous breaks and loving the surf crew hospitality.
It’s been a while but this year Noosa is going back to the MSA Challenge in September, Mal Club member and podium regular Wally Allan is co-ordinator and I’m planning to join him for the fun, now that they have an over 70s division! Entries are now full for this year but word on the beach is that Noosa will be there in strength next year, and Wally and I will report from the ‘Bu next month.
