Shaun Tomson: “Filipe is surfing’s Jackson Pollock!”

Surfing great Shaun Tomson relives Filipe Toledo's game-changing ten at J-Bay!

It had been forty years since my world title, forty nine years since I first surfed J-Bay, and the WSL hired me to supply the colour commentary, the expert analysis for the event there. I’d do the morning show, I’d do the closing show and occasional live cross pieces.

They asked me where I wanted to sit. I told ‘em I wanted to set myself up in the competitors’ area.

I wanted to feel their energy.

When I’d driven up to J-Bay the week before, the first guy I saw was Filipe. The surf was small, three-to-four foot, and I’d never seen anyone go so fast. Ever. I thought, maybe it was because I hadn’t seen a lot of pro surfing firsthand recently, but even in comparison, the guy was surfing in another gear. If the other guys were on 100 octane, he was on nitro. As far as speed along the wave, there must be a 20 percent differential.

On the morning of Filipe’s game-changing ten, I was walking along the wooden walkway over the dunes and I could see this light north-westerly wind luffing into the competitors’ faces. It was the perfect wind for aerials and not the hard devil wind.

Filipe was surfing against Jordy and Julian. It was the best three air guys on tour, if you leave out John John. I’m thinking, man, there’s gong to be some fireworks.

Before the ten, Filipe nails a super-fast, super-high, mega-forehand rotation. He sticks it perfectly right at the top of the wave, the perfect position to continue on but then he catches a rail on a gouge, a very basic manoeuvre. It’s the only reason he doesn’t get a ten. After the air, you can see that the other competitors are a little shaken. Then Filipe wipes out and his peers realise he’s not invincible.

Okay, he’s fallen off. We can deal with with a nine.

The calm doesn’t last.

Ten minutes later Filipe does the biggest alley-oop I’ve ever seen, the biggest alley-oop anyone’s ever seen. Then he goes straight into the next one. It’s like the guy has no limiter. He’s got not perception of the way he should compete or the way other people expect him to compete.

Filipe re-wrote competition surfing on one wave.

I looked around me. Owen Wright’s mouth was on the bloody ground. Competitors didn’t know whether to erupt in applause or pull the dagger out of their hearts. It was one of those pivotal moments. I’ve seen a lot of them and that was one of those waves. It was an iconic wave. An instantly iconic wave. Not just because of the manoeuvre but because of the balls-out approach.

It’s as if he was a racing car driver and he hit a corner at 250 miles an hour. And after he sticks his second oop perfectly he unleashes this series of carves down the line. The guy is a speeding bullet that gets faster. He doesn’t lose velocity – he increases velocity. After that first oop he’d already got a ten.

Then he turned into something super human.

I looked around me. Owen Wright’s mouth was on the bloody ground. Competitors didn’t know whether to erupt in applause or pull the dagger out of their hearts. It was one of those pivotal moments. I’ve seen a lot of them and that was one of those waves. It was an iconic wave. An instantly iconic wave. Not just because of the manoeuvre but because of the balls-out approach.

For me, as fan, it was inspiring to see a new style of art unfold. It was Jackson Pollock, the famous abstract artist, gnarly.

You know what it reminded me of? I was in the South African army’s national service and I was a Jew. The Afrikaners didn’t like the Jews and we learned karate to fight them off. Karate is very much about honour, power and speed. Around the same time, Bruce Lee movies started coming out and so you had kung fu. Looking at Toledo, you could compare pro surfing with karate, and he as this ninja kung fu Bruce Lee master. He’s the ninja king.

And those turns after the second oop, man, they were sudden. His acceleration, not just his top-end speed, is so steep. He comes around a corner faster, tighter, and with a burst of speed unlike anyone.

You know what it reminded me of? I was in the South African army’s national service and I was a Jew. The Afrikaners didn’t like the Jews and we learned karate to fight them off. Karate is very much about honour, power and speed. Looking at Toledo, you could compare pro surfing with karate, and he as this ninja kung fu Bruce Lee master.

His challenge is  courage. He’s got the skill sets, but he’s gotta find that courage. That’s his weakness. Courage in big surf. You’re not born with it. You learn it by taking action. It will be interesting to see his development, if he’ll paddle over the ledge at Pipe, at Teahupoo.

But that’s in the future.

That one wave at J-Bay. It was sublime. It was art. It was a beautiful thing. It was a beautiful thing.

(Editor’s note: This story first appeared in Surfing Life‘s surfboard issue. Buy the magazine or subscribe here.)