About a minute after Noosa’s longboard superstar Harrison Roach won the final of the Cuervo Malibu Longboard Classic, and with it his first world title, I sent the new champ a congratulatory text followed immediately by one to his dad, my friend Patrick Roach.
Within seconds Patrick was on the phone with the husky voice of someone woken from a deep sleep. “The ping woke me up. What, it’s all over?”
This made the champ’s dad possibly the only member of the Noosa surf community to have missed our greatest moment since Josh Constable’s world title 16 years ago.
But it was completely understandable.
He’d spent two nights in a row sitting in front of a screen watching the action from Malibu, and with Harry just a couple of heats away from a maiden world title, Pat had pushed back on the lounge and closed his eyes for just a few minutes. A mistake.
Patrick Roach, Harrison’s greatest supporter, along with mum Elizabeth, since the stylish grom first hit our radars as a future champion almost 20 years ago, spent the next couple of hours catching up with his son’s Malibu heroics on replay, while on the beach itself Harry took care of dozens of media demands before surrendering himself to a long and beer-fuelled celebration with a big Noosa contingent which included his partner Edie, best mate and shaper Thomas Bexon, and Thomas Surfboards partner Andrew St Baker.
Few surfers are more deserving of a boozy celebration, and a world title for that matter, than Harrison Roach, who looked every inch a champion from his mid-teens, having combined natural talent with a keen sense of surfing history and a deep respect for local surfing mentors like Peter Biden and Darryl Homan, who taught him the value of lessons learnt from riding a 50-year-old surfboard.
But like Josh Constable and Julian Wilson before him, Harry struggled with finding his right direction in surfing.
A couple of years back, in a profile of Harrison for Tracks magazine, I wrote: “How does a world class surfer who defies classification develop out of the longboarding oeuvre of Noosa? Julian Wilson did, of course – Harrison says it was purely because of his freakish talent – but ahead of his extraordinary childhood beach-mate, Harry pays homage to the older guys who taught him an appreciation of the broader church of surfing, who opened his eyes to the possibilities of all surfcraft in all situations. It was them who set Harrison Roach off on a different direction.”
That different direction could be summarised as “ride ‘em all”, which is to say the right board for the right conditions.
As Harrison told Surfer magazine a couple of years ago: “If you saw me behind the rocks at Snapper pulling in on a longboard, I’d expect you to slap me. There is a time and a place for everything, and some things are just wrong. But if you are surfing First Point Noosa or small, perfect Malibu, you are kidding yourself if you are on a shortboard.”
A fast developer on every kind of surfcraft he tried, Harry won the Queensland and national junior longboard titles as well as the Queensland shortboard in 2005 at age 15, and after saving money working as a glassie at Sunshine Beach Surf Club and finishing school, he took a gap year to surf on the shortboard qualifying tour and the ASP world longboard tour.
He found them both wanting, and instead began to find himself as a surfer through an increasing passion for traditional surfing on traditional shapes, which ultimately led him to Thomas Doc Bexon’s door just over a decade ago.
This was to become one of the great surfer/shaper partnerships.
Think Nat Young and Bob McTavish in the 1960s, Gerry Lopez and Dick Brewer in the ‘70s, and Mick Fanning and Steph Gilmore with Darren Handley in the 2000s. Each a partnership bonded in design and execution.
For more than a decade now, Thomas Surfboards founder Doc Bexon and test pilot Harrison Roach have changed the face of modern longboarding from their Noosa base. And they’ve done it by going back to the very roots of surfboard riding, in culture and in the designs of the boards they ride.
Which brings us back to Malibu last week.
Having won the first of three tour events at Manly earlier in the year, followed by a throwaway ninth at Huntington Beach, Harry was quietly confident when I spoke to him before he left for California, but he knew he’d have to fight off late charges from old fox Taylor Jensen and rising star Kaniela Stewart sitting alongside him at the top of the rankings.
But he was on song from the start, and when I switched on for finals’ day and saw the silky lines of First Point Malibu, I thought he was home.
Although not exactly, since the two First Points, both world class longboard waves, differ in breaking speed.
Harry and Doc had that covered with what the shaper calls an “Aussie hybrid California noserider”, a scoop-tail just a little slower in the pocket to allow those long 10s, yet designed for power turns.
To say it worked is the understatement of the year. Until he faltered in the final against Kani, but recovered in time, Harry had surfed flawlessly, peaking with a throwaway third nine against Taylor in the semi from heaven.
In an added bonus for the Noosa surfing community, our adopted daughter and Thomas team rider Mason Schremmer surfed superbly for a third in the women’s, earning her a slot on the championship tour in 2023.
FOOTNOTE: Noosa’s former all-round waterman, dog whisperer and entrepreneur Chris De Aboitiz turns 60 this weekend. How did that happen! Looking forward to a great weekend on The Summit. Cheers Chris from your many Noosa mates.
