By PHIL JARRATT
THE 24th annual Cricks Noosa Festival of Surfing will see the welcome and much anticipated return of the Big Three banner longboard events – the Golden Breed Noserider, the World Surfaris Old Mal and the Logger Pro divisions.
Attracting an international field of some of the world’s finest proponents of traditional longboarding, and with more than 100 surfers filling the three disciplines to capacity, each heat will surely be something not to miss.
Eight countries, including France, New Zealand, Japan and the USA, will be represented, many of the competitors entering at least two of the Big Three.
Most popular is the most recently created division, the Logger Pro.
Over recent years, longboarding internationally has swayed away from its more high performance alter ego, favouring heavier, more traditional, single fin craft.
This shift has dictated the development of new judging criteria, recognising classic manoeuvres, such as noseriding and drop-knee turns, over fast cutbacks and big, off-the-lip tricks.
As one of the few international log-riding events, the Cricks Noosa Festival of Surfing has gained global renown and with it, a swathe of some of longboarding’s biggest names have flooded to the event.
This year is no exception, defending champion Harrison Roach challenged by, among others, Australians Matt Cuddihy, Matt Chojnacki and former and current world champions respectively, Taylor Jensen and Harley Ingleby.
From the USA, Devon Howard, Mikey De Temple, Jesse Hinkle and Matthew Dalton, France’s impressive Delpero brothers, Edouard and Antoine, festival regular Joe Davies from the UK and Japan’s Shohei Akimoto and Masahito Kobayashi are just a scattering of names from a stellar global line-up, which will see some intense competition.
Jensen and Ingleby will back up for the Golden Breed Noserider, the pair of world champs claiming first and third respectively in the 2014 finals held in big, fast and very challenging conditions.
Competitors are required to spend as much time with five toes over the nose as possible, time being doubled for both feet on the nose in what is very often a gravity-defying spectacle.
California’s CJ Nelson, will be making the journey to Noosa for the first time in several years and has commissioned a 10-foot noserider board specifically for the occasion.
Revered as one of the most supreme and dynamic noseriders, he is sure to throw down the gauntlet in a highly challenging event.
The Old Mal is evocative of surfing’s longboard heyday, the early and mid-1960s period, prior to the shortboard revolution of the ’70s.
Criteria for this division differ both in the surfing and the equipment.
Surfboards must pre-date 1968, invariably out-aging their pilots by at least a decade!
Progressive moves are left behind in favour of the purest old school style.
Noosa’s Harrison Biden and Thomas Bexon will be defending their first and second places of 2014, and Sydney’s Matt Chojnacki, a surfer who has very much immersed himself in the surfing and culture of the era, will once again return, trying to improve on last year’s fourth place.
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