By Phil Jarratt
“Connor, Connor!” It was like the Beatles just landed at Essendon Airport in 1964!
North Narrabeen Beach was full of chanting teeny-boppers as the mild-mannered, laidback Californian quietly demolished the flamboyant white-haired Brazilian world champ with lip-line power surfing as opposed to ridiculously huge punts to the heavens. I know which kind of surfing I prefer to watch, but who knew that the kids would get behind real surfing?
Or maybe it was just that they’d chanted themselves hoarse for Italo Ferreira all weekend, and when I arrived midway through the men’s round of 16 of the Rip Curl Cup on Monday afternoon, they were ready for a new hero. And Connor Coffin is a bit of a guitar-pickin’ legend in the Tom Curren mould.
Maybe it’s just that I haven’t been on the ground at a World Tour event for a couple of years, but this fan craziness amongst the kids really seems to have gone next level. Of course, having very few events to promote since Covid kicked in, the World Surf League media platforms have doubled-down on profiling the top surfers as super cool influencers who date super models. On the women’s tour, the leading surfers actually ARE super models in their spare time.
It’s a brave new world out there, and when you get past the hoopla and check what’s going on in the surf, it’s a new world there too. It’s too early to call it the changing of the guard, but to these eyes it seems that despite Ferreira handing the yellow jersey to Medina, the cracks are beginning to show in the Brazilian Storm. They can be beaten, as Connor and Fred Morais showed. And while Julian Wilson and Ryan Callinan are struggling a bit in the Aussie camp, Morgan Cibilic and Ethan Ewing are on fire.
But Tuesday was Gabby’s day. I arrived in time to see him blasting off for the heavens during his semi, and then taking it still higher for two near perfect scores in the final, taking out a courageous carver in Connor Coffin.
Good show, WSL. The car park contests are back big time.
Back in the day
Seeing the new gang at performing at North Narrabeen this week took me back nearly half a century to the days when it was the hub of professional surfing in Australia, thanks to the Coca Cola Bottlers/2SM Surfabout.
And seeing the survivors of the old gang on the beach and around the pubs made me even more nostalgic.
Known to us more colloquially as the Coke contest back in the day, it was the richest contest in the world when the so-called “gipsy tour” barely paid airfares for the pros. To put this in perspective, at the first Coke in 1974, Michael Peterson won $1500 for first place. Nat Young donated his paltry third place $600 to the Labor Party election campaign, which made more sense than what MP did with his dough, but we won’t go there.
There mightn’t have been much money on offer, but we always had a lot of fun when the surf circus came to town. The Tracks Rages at the Scullery in Avalon were legendary, featuring eating and drinking contests, among other excesses, and the presentation nights at the old Alexander Reception Rooms at Narrabeen were pure gold, with drunken legends of the sport duking it out in the foyer as sponsors and their wives left in high dudgeon.
My old Fairfax Media colleague Graham “Sid” Cassidy was the founding director of the Coke contest, and when the company sent him to London, my deputy editor at Tracks mag, Paul Holmes took over, so right through the ‘70s and into the ‘80s I was never far from the wet bar in the VIP hospitality tent, such as it was. These days, with security for the athletes, Covid crowd controls and door lists, it’s a bit tougher to crack the inner sanctum, but I managed a couple of brief pitstops this week while in town to screen our flick, Men Of Wood and Foam, as part of the Northern Beaches festivities.
The pro tour these days is a completely different world, especially with the pandemic still calling the shots, and I’m not sure that I’d want to be as involved as I was for many years. But it’s still fun to to check in, check it out, then check out before someone gives you a job to do.
