"I can’t even tie my shoelaces. Been in
excruciating pain 24/7. Even the morphine doesn’t work."
In the hot Queensland summer of 2021, Gary Elkerton, a
three-time runner-up to the world title, two of ’em amid
controversial circumstances, hit 321 pounds.
It’s a considerable sum by anyone’s standards, even for a man
with the nickname “Kong.” Shortly afterward, the then-57-year-old
appeared in a photo for his alma mater, the North Shore
Boardriders. Kong saw it and feared the worst. “Are you kidding
me?” he whispered to himself, examining the creases of fat around
his knees. “I’m going to die!”
Radical weight fluctuations have been a part of Kong’s life ever
since he started gaining mass for the Hawaiian season—he
appreciated the extra 60 pounds of ballast on big waves—before
shedding it all prior to the small-wave events. But this was more
than a little different. Now he was gambling with his life, not the
thrilled expectancy of the North Shore.
A driven man with a cat’s fury, Kong figured he could work it
off. He took a job as a delivery driver, supplying restaurants with
5-gallon barrels of cooking oil and bags of rice. He also practiced
intermittent fasting. By winter, manual labor and not eating for 20
hours each day had hacked away 90 pounds.
Then he blew his knee stepping out of his truck. It was the same
knee he’d injured in 1985, when he was socked by a loose board at
12-foot Sunset and required 58 stitches. (The doctors back then
told him he needed half a year out of the water, although he was
surfing again in two weeks.)
As often happens with an aged machine, when one part goes,
another follows. Kong’s right hip, the fulcrum that operated his
powerful back-foot lever, started to hurt like hell. An MRI
revealed advanced osteoarthritis, the doc telling him the cartilage
between the femoral head and the hip socket had been gone for at
least 15 years, the stress from the knee injury bringing it into
relief. Kong had long figured something was wrong. His back leg was
taking longer to get into position on takeoffs, but it wasn’t
something he couldn’t work around.
It was the cap to some hard years: Kong had lost his beloved
father, Keith, aka Bully; his old tour buddy Sunny Garcia was in a
vegetative state at a Texas facility after an attempted suicide;
another tour pal, John Shimooka, had taken his own life; and his
one-time bête noire and friend Derek Ho had died of a heart attack
at 55.
It’s around these circumstances that we interrogate our subject,
a man on crutches and waiting for the $30,000 hip replacement
operation paid for by kind friends, thereby circumventing the
three-year public-hospital waiting period, occasionally driving to
the nearby store in his $100 Ford station wagon. “I can’t even tie
my shoelaces,” he says. “Been in excruciating pain 24/7. Even the
morphine doesn’t work. It’s been an interesting couple of months,
mate.”
DR Two weeks and you’re under the knife. Have you
thought about how your life will change when you’re
pain-free?
GE That’s the biggest thing I’m looking forward to. I’m sitting
here right now, [and] I’ve got this one position I can sit [in].
It’s like, “Don’t move, man, whatever you do. Just stay right
there!” I’m quite lucky. I’ve got a good friend taking care of me.
You need help with these things. You can’t do it on your
own.
DR Because you didn’t have private health insurance, you
would’ve had to wait years to access the public system. Real lucky
you got good pals.
GE I can’t imagine sitting around for three years like this.
DR You’d go to some dark places.
GE Listen, it’s been hard. But I’ve got a lot of good people
around me. That’s important.
DR Are you married?
GE Nuh! Not married. No. Single.
DR Single and looking?
GE Ah, nuh! Very happy, mate. I got a lot of friends around.
[Laughs.] But those days are over.
DR Talk to me about your dramatic weight fluctuations
when you were on tour—getting big for Hawaii, then shedding it all
for the beachbreak events.
GE The type of circuit we were on back then was brutal because
we had Hawaii and then we had to surf in minute waves. I was quite
lucky I could fluctuate my weight quickly like that. Which, in the
end, is not a good thing. I wish I knew about intermittent fasting
back then. It’s been a big savior with my life. If I didn’t do that
a year and a half ago, I’d be dead. The doctor said, “You would’ve
had a massive heart attack.”
DR How do you operate with fasting?
GE It’s a time thing—when you eat, right? So, I started off on
“Warrior,” which means you’re allowed to eat between 12 and six
[p.m.]. And you have to stop eating at six. Most people’s body
takes 12 hours to eat all the sugar out of it, so if you stop
eating at six and you’re up at seven in the morning, your body
switches to keto. When you stay in the keto[genic] state, your body
is eating fat. And if you do any type of exercise within that, it’s
really burning the fat. Why a lot of people give up on that is they
don’t see any visual results because it starts eating all the fat
around your organs first, so you see nothing on your face or around
your gut until months later. The photo I’ve got from when I started
to now is like two different people.
DR Ninety pounds is a lot of cargo to throw
overboard.
GE It’s crazy. It’s ridiculous. And you know what? Anyone can do
it. You just have to be mentally strong with where you want to go
with it. I’ve got a daughter who’s 17 years old. I want to see her
get to 21. My surfing deteriorated completely and I wasn’t enjoying
surfing at all. This is a game changer for me and a second lease on
life.
DR What was it like when you stepped away from pro
surfing? You milked it a little by winning three consecutive World
Masters titles from 2000 through 2003. But still, it ain’t
easy.
GE When it all happened, my daughter was born and I had a
different responsibility. I’d moved back to Australia after living
in France, and my partner at the time had a business, so there was
money there. I was doing surf-coaching things on the side and
I was…kinda lost. Then I took my daughter to a swimming lesson
out the back of Mullumbimby [near Byron Bay] and I didn’t agree
with the way they were teaching kids to swim. So I built a massive
indoor kids’ swimming center called Kong for Kids. Ran that for 12
years. Did really well—200 kids a week. I was the main teacher
there. It was really cool.
DR What happened?
GE I wasn’t married, but I separated from my Brazilian
partner—the mother of Luna, my daughter. I went to the Gold Coast,
did some work with [surfboard company] Mt. Woodgee for a little
bit, and then I moved up to the Sunshine Coast and I slothed around
and blew out to 146 kilos [321 pounds]. But it’s been an
interesting run. Leaving the tour is a really hard thing—when you
see the train leave the station and you’ve gotta go and find
something else. I’ve been very fortunate. Some people haven’t in my
generation, because we didn’t make much money. My properties I
owned in France, I lost to my first wife, and I still don’t own a
property. I just live my life the way I’m living it right now, day
by day and enjoying it.
DR That move to France when you were 22, and taking a
French wife, was a dramatic shift for you—from tough son of a
fisherman to urbane sophisticate.
GE I still speak fluent French. I moved there in the early ’80s.
There was only Belly [Stephen Bell] and Maurice Cole there at the
time. Yeah, you know what? That was a big change in my life as
well, meeting [French model] Pascale [Roby]. I have to say, the
pinnacle of my surfing, I really feel, was from ’85 to ’90. All
those events I won—Pipe, the Triple Crowns—[were] when I was living
in France. I was in France for 27 years. I was very lucky to see a
lot of great things in my life, but that was one of ’em—seeing
France in those early days. La Gravière, there was no one out. Just
me, Maurice, Belly, and a handful of French guys who wanted to have
a go at it. And obviously, living in the Médoc [on the left bank of
the Gironde estuary near Bordeaux], you’ve got all the best wines
in the world, which I acquired a great taste for. And their food
and their culture. Everything about the French way of life, I
loved.
DR You say you lost two world titles to the
“incompetence of the system,” which leads into that ’93 title
showdown at Pipe when Derek Ho blocked Larry Rios so you couldn’t
make the final, thereby getting him the win.
GE Yeah. The one before that was even harder, with Damien
[Hardman]. I love Damien, but that was the year [1987] they decided
to finish the world title at Manly. I left Hawaii in the number-one
position. I’d won events back to back. I should’ve been world
champion. I shouldn’t have had to go to Manly to compete in minute
waves. The funny thing about it, the priority rule at that stage
was if the guy who had priority caught the wave, even if he
couldn’t get around that section, you couldn’t catch that wave. So
I was paddling back out and needed a three-point-something, and
this right came and Damien was way deeper. And he took off and went
straight in the whitewater. So I couldn’t catch it or I would’ve
been called for an interference. If it wasn’t for that rule, I
would’ve got the three-point-five. And I would’ve won the world
title right there. They changed the rule two weeks later. I was
like, “What the fuck?” That world title should’ve been won in
Hawaii. The second one, with Curren in 1990, there were a couple of
weird calls in that one. But that third one, with Derek, was the
gut-wrencher. But listen, I know what should’ve happened in my
heart. I had an amazing career. I wouldn’t change anything. Well,
I’d change those rules. [Laughs.]
DR How does someone like you, who has ridden those
highs, navigate those later years in, as your old pal Rob Bain said
to me, a “peaceful contentment”?
GE It’s not easy to be traveling the world like a rock star and
two years later you slip into the bushes. Life’s not easy and it’s
not getting any easier.
DR It’s been a radically tragic last few years: Sunny,
Derek, Shmoo. How do you react to those events?
GE [Long silence.] Fuck… It’s fuckin’ hard, dude. [Swallows
tears.] Phew. Um. Phew. [Expels air.] Listen, I know Sunny was
fighting depression for a long time. Sunny, Shmoo, you don’t really
know what happened, but something clicked in their life, obviously,
that left them feeling empty, that they had nothing. And they had a
lot more to give in life. I was close to Shmoo and especially
Sunny. And yeah, mate, some people, we don’t know why. I’ve never
had those thoughts, thank God. I lost my dad at the same time. That
was…uh…that was a whole…year…gnarly year, man. Derek, too, with him
passing. You ask yourself questions, like, “What the fuck is going
on here?” But the older we get, the more people start to pass away.
It’s life. [Long pause.] I just wish I…I… I don’t know why Shmoo
and Sunny—they had so many people around. I don’t know how that
could’ve happened. That’s what I find hard to understand. They’re
people who are surrounded by good people. I know that if I was in
that position, I’d be putting my hand up straight away.
DR You’re an optimistic cat.
GE If you live in the past, you live in depression. If you live
in the future, you got anxiety of what’s coming up. If you live in
the present, you can control it—you can visualize and plan good
things day by day. I’ve always been someone who’s been lucky to
survive drugs and stuff back in the day, pull myself up and get
back on the straight and narrow. Some people don’t have that. I
knew I was very fortunate on tour, even though I behaved like a
dickhead most of the time. Something I used to do that I didn’t
tell anyone was everywhere I’d go, I’d go to the local hospital and
go to the children’s ward and give out stickers and posters. It
brought me back. I’d realize how fortunate I was, and I still look
at that sometimes. I say to friends, when they’re whining about the
rain or if it’s too hot, I tell ’em, “Go for a walk down the
children’s ward and see the parents whose kids are in hospital.
Think of the kids who are handicapped. We have a great life. We’re
blessed.”
Postscript: As of press time, Kong was convalescing following
hip-replacement surgery, although he was walking the day after the
procedure. “I’m pain-free,” he said. “It’s unbelievable.” He was
also planning a return to surfing. “My boards have been waxed and
polished about a hundred times. They’re in perfect condition, just
sitting there, ready for when I’m ready.”
(Editor’s note: This story first appeared in The
Surfer’s Journal accompanied by a wonderful hand-drawn portrait by
Andrea Ventura. Click here to view.)
