Pipe Dreams

By Alasdair McClintock on December 3, 2015 in Other

This December the 2015 World Surf League title will be decided at the Pipeline Masters in Hawaii and I am surprised to say that I actually care.

It has taken me some time to warm to professional surfing. As in tennis, I find it much harder to follow a single person – someone I’ve never met, no less – than a team. Their flaws become amplified and the confidence required to actually succeed at such a level can often come across as arrogant and unlikeable. Let’s face it, for every Pat Rafter there are fifty cocky brats who needed a few more twelve-hour shifts mopping floors at Macca’s in their teenage years.

But my interest in surfing has steadily grown since moving to Bronte roughly seven years ago, as has my love of the lifestyle that makes the sport so great. What strikes me so much about the men and women of surfing is that they truly live and love what they do. If they weren’t travelling the world and surfing the best breaks on the sponsors’ dollar, they would probably still be doing much the same anyway, happily clocking on for those twelve-hour shifts and dreaming of crystal-clear barrels in the Maldives.

Personally, it is one of my biggest regrets that I did not start surfing earlier. Growing up over an hour from a surf beach, it just didn’t seem an option. It wasn’t too much of an ask to drive 45 minutes west to get the hell beaten out of me on a rugby field, but the beach just seemed another world away. A place for holidays and sunburn. And when we did go, I’d just pull out the old fluorescent foam ‘boogie board’ and ride the whitewash. I never even contemplated getting a proper board.

So when Mick Fanning, Adriano de Souza and Filipe Toledo descend upon the world’s most famous reef break to decide the title (fingers crossed Medina doesn’t sneak it in), I will certainly be watching. No points for guessing who I will be getting behind either.

Since that inquisitive beast of a shark so famously got punched in the nose (the poor bugger) in South Africa, Mick Fanning has done nothing but endear himself to the Australian public, and me. The way he handled himself both during and after the event was top class. Donating the money from his subsequent Sixty Minutes interview to the gentleman attacked in Ballina spoke volumes about the type of guy he must be. Far more than his brave reaction to every surfer’s worst nightmare.

Since Mike Tyson retired, there aren’t too many other mainstream sports where getting eaten alive is a genuine possibility, and given I still get a bit nervous on a four-foot day at Maroubra, I have nothing but respect for the people who surf for a living, or just as a way of life. They are all a little mad, perhaps, but I admire them all the more for it.