I’ve been head down, bum up on the book promotion rounds these past couple of weeks, thanks to a very energetic publicist and a book that seems to resonate with talk show hosts.
Of course, books of lists are always the low-hanging fruit for the media, because everyone will have a different opinion about who or what gets listed. But in the case of this one, The Immortals of Australian Surfing, which nominates just 12 surfers out of six decades of amazing achievements, I was probably always setting myself up for a fall.
It wouldn’t be the first time. About 40 years ago I was commissioned by Nine’s Wide World of Sports to work with the show’s presenters, Ian Chappell and the late Mike Gibson, to select 50 subjects for a book called Australian Sporting Hall of Fame, which we did over several Fridays while floating around in a boat on Sydney Harbour drinking beers. We could only have two male tennis players and Rocket Rod Laver was a no-brainer. My associate Neil Jameson and I voted for Newk for the other slot and Chappelli agreed, but Gibbo was having none of it. It was Ken “Muscles” Rosewall or I was going overboard. That didn’t happen but Gibbo wrote in his introduction, “I was outvoted” and he never forgave me for the rest of his life. And I reckon he had it right.
A dozen years ago, for a book called Australia’s Hottest 100 Surfing Legends, there was thankfully a bit more room to move, but even so my omissions caused me a lot of flak. This time, approached by the Gelding Street Press to add surfing’s contribution to their ongoing Immortals series, I must admit I didn’t pause to consider the consequences of leaving out so many champions I’ve known for 30, 40, even 50 years. It was only when I realised that Australia has produced far more than 12 world champions, that I knew I was in trouble.
So I had to rethink the criteria, and it went something like this: being a world champion doesn’t necessarily make you an immortal (although a few of them would help), and equally you can be an immortal without ever having won a world title (although a couple of seconds might help). Based loosely on this, I started tapping the keys and produced my Immortals, which are not necessarily going to be yours. In fact every time I pick up the book – a classy little production, I have to say – I cringe as I think, how the hell could I have left out him/her!
I’m not going to tell you everyone who’s in it – who knows, it might be in your stocking and I don’t want to ruin Christmas for you – but obviously the pioneers, Midget and Nat, and the GOAT of his era, MR, and Tom Carroll’s on the cover so you know he’s in. The girls were a bit easier. There are four of them and if you think about it for a minute, I’m pretty sure yours will be the same as mine.
Meantime, you should never knock a free plug, but if one more interviewer asks me how on earth I managed to get the list down to just 12, well, I’ll politely say something like what I’ve written above, and hope for the best.
The Noosa launch of The Immortals is next Thursday 7 December, from 6pm at Annie’s Books, Peregian Beach. Free wine and cheese, musical interlude by Aido from The SandFlys, plenty of laughs and signed books while stocks last! BYO chair and see you there.
Signed copies also available at philjarratt.com
Go Coco in Rio!
A week in Rio competing for your country – not a bad way to spend schoolies, nor to say goodbye to an illustrious career in the junior ranks.
That’s what’s happening for Tewantin teenager and Noosa Boardriders star Coco Cairns, who took advantage of an overnight increase in swell and some pumping four-foot peaks at Praia da Macumba to cruise to a win in her Girls U-18 first round heat at the 2023 ISA World Junior Surfing Championships. Coco’s got a long way to go as I write but she got off to a great start, along with fellow Irukandji (Aussie surf team) Fletcher Kelleher in the Boys U-16 who really set the field ablaze in his first-ever ISA heat, on his first trip to Brazil, earning the highest single wave score of his division, a 9.17, and highest heat total of the event so far, 17.17.
The best junior surfers from around the globe will contend for medals in this prestigious event that has proved itself as a direct pathway to the Olympic Games, with 33 out of the 40 Tokyo 2020 Olympic surfers previously participating in the WJSC, 16 of them claiming ISA World Junior medals, including Australians Olympic Bronze Medalist Owen Wright and Stephanie Gilmore. This year’s World Juniors sees a record 46 national teams competing, including debutant nations Czech Republic, Hungary and Ukraine.
