Who doesn't?
The old adage, they don’t make ’em like they used
to, can be best applied to the former world champion Mark
Occhilupo.
The story hardly needs to be retold, but let’s recap in one
sentence: Eighties surf prodigy explodes onto tour, finds
drugs, gets fat and goes, briefly, mad, resurrects, wins a title,
and becomes surfing’s most beloved icon. A walking paradox of
naiveté and complexity.
Occ’s surfing at Bells in 1997 has yet to be bettered.
A few years ago, Mick Fanning told
Coastalwatch: “To this day I’ve never seen
someone dominate an event like Occy did the Skins. He didn’t have
one dud heat. His surfing was so much faster and bigger than anyone
else out there and all the top pros were in it, including Kelly. I
definitely haven’t seen a backhand as strong at Bells since. Occ’s
waves in the Skins would still be getting near-perfect scores in
World Tour heats today and it was 17 years ago.”
Want more? Ask Matt
Warshaw.
And when Occ, who is now fifty one years old, married
thrice and father to three sons and stepfather to, I think, seven
kids, is on he takes the interview to beautiful heights.
In this piece with reporter Hamish McLachlan from Melbourne’s
Herald Sun, mostly to push the wave pool company he’s
ambassador for, Occ covers his childhood, the fat and crazy phase,
how his sisters used to dress him like a doll (“I liked it”), the
marriages, the kids, getting into the USA without a passport and a
few other fine stories.
Excerpts:
You’re the youngest of four, and the only boy. Were you
used as a mannequin by your sisters?
MO: Yes. They used to dress me up, put make up on me, put
dresses on me, the whole lot. It wasn’t very fair. At the same time
though, I kind of liked it. When I was four or five they got me a
kilt, so I used to wear that around. I’ve grown out of it now.
HM: You’re not doing any cross-dressing
now?
MO: No, no. I’m all good now.
What did the tour look like year by year, month by month
as a young single teenager?
MO: Wowee, it was pretty intense back then! It was fun, but it
was a grind at the same time. I didn’t realise that at the start
because it just looked so good. Back then, it was just going from
the hotel room, to the beach, and back again. It wasn’t that safe
back then either. While I was over there, I realised that it wasn’t
even that organised. I’d be going to California and there’d be
raging parties around. Then off to Japan, then Europe, to Brazil,
because back then we had twenty odd events in a single year. I was
actually in the top 3 in the world for the first few years. I never
really dropped out of the top ten, but I was homesick, and I just
wanted to go home.
Did you think you would surf professionally
again?
MO: I didn’t really think about the future, to be honest. I was
way too young to retire, only in my early 20s. I just didn’t think
about the long term, and thought at the time that I was homesick. I
missed my friends, I missed my mum and dad, my sisters, and I just
wanted to be back home, so that’s what I did, and I didn’t really
tell anyone. I had to make a phone call when I got home and tell
the founder and owner of Billabong, Gordon Merchant. That was a
scary phone call! He understood though. He was fantastic. He still
paid me the same wage, and a very good one at that.
Another child at 50 is one of the great performances of
all time. Forget the World Championship in ‘99!
MO:(laughs) Thank you. It was just so cool. This is my girls
sixth child, and my third boy. We’ve got one big happy family. All
the kids surf, and it’s really funny because our new child has
brought everyone closer. Our youngest are both 10, and they’re in
the same class. They’re best mates, and my fourteen-year-old used
to go out with her thirteen-year-old. They don’t anymore, but they
did before we first met. They’re all in the same school, and they
all surf. The funniest thing is that my two boys are dark, because
my ex-wife Mae’s parents were Filipino. She’s dark, and my kids are
dark. They’ve got her coloured skin. My fiancé’s ex was Tongan, so
all her kids are dark as well. We get some funny looks when we’re
all in a mall, cruising around with seven dark kids all around us.
Now we’ve got little Jasper, and he’s going to feel a bit strange
when he grows up because he’s going to go, what happened here? How
come I’m light, and everyone else is dark?
Read the entire interview
here.