"My dad’s got enough fibre glass in his lungs to make a couple of boards but every day he blows me away with his positive energy and will to live."
The eighty-three-year-old inventor of the sheepskin Ugg boot and surfboard entrepreneur, Shane Stedman, has been awarded the Order of Australia medal for his services to the sport he’s devoted his life to.
In the Australian honours system, appointments to the Order of Australia confer the highest recognition for outstanding achievement and service.
His son and former world #11 turned jiujitsu expert Luke Stedman posted:
“I’m so proud of my Dad. Today he has been awarded the OAM or the The Medal of the Order of Australia award for his contribution to the surf industry. The old man was the biggest manufacture of surfboards in the southern hemisphere in the late 1960’s and into the early 70’s. I can’t even explain what im feeling right now. My dad’s got enough fibre glass in his lungs to make a couple of boards ( his words ) but every day he blows me away with his positive energy and will to live. I’m your biggest supporter and fan Dad.”
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Two years ago, Shane Stedman, who had just turned eighty but was still squirting testosterone like a fifteen year old, had surgery to remove “balloons” in his chest. These growths squashed his lungs, reducing his ability to breathe by eighty-five percent.
Couple the fibrous growths with emphysema from sixty years of shaping and the Shane Stedman could barely walk to the end of the street without stopping to suck in gutfuls of air, as if he’d just run a marathon.
The “extroverted surf-world entrepreneur” and creator of Shane Surfboards is best known, writes Matt Warshaw, for “the short, stubby, Shane Surfboard ‘popout’, a mass-produced board designed for beginners and offered at discount rates in sporting goods and department stores. The brightly-colored boards earned Stedman a lot of money in the early ’70s (an Aussie magazine nicknamed him “the summer millionaire), but pushed him out of favor with Australia’s surfing tastemakers.”
“I’m in the fun industry, the surf industry is fun,” said Shane Stedman. “We certainly do live in the lucky country, no doubt about that.”
Shane Surfboards aka The original Wavestorm
Good gosh. A genuine ‘good news’surf story for once
considering the vein of recent articles, are we expecting Ugg to announce a new transgender ambassador, Luke to drop the boardies and reveal a vagina, or Pops to unveil a new she-dick model board?
Uggs are themselves already transgendered.
Legend…rock stars to movie stars wear em’.
Please allow me to do some actual surf journalism for you.
Shane Steadman did not invent the Ugg boot. This is well documented.
https://everythingaustralia…
Shallow, mean and small minded. Yes there are many others but who the fuck are you to imply that he does not deserve it? By the sound of if it he is approaching the end of his life and you vomit up a load of crap to run down a bloke who has made a great contribution over many decades with unfailing good spirit. Go fuck yourself arsehole. And just to be clear, no I never worked for him or knew him well. But I knew many who did and never heard a word against himfrom any of them.
The “load of crap” is actually true though.
The award was for service to surfing so your spray sbout Ugh boots was irrelevant. And what? You think Steve Jobs invented the Macintosh or the iPhone? Shane did what smart business people always do, he saw an opportunity and took it. And if you want to complain about the method of selecting recipients maybe direct your complaint to the administrators, not by attacking a highly respected figure in the history of surfing in a public forum. If you had any decency you would delete your comment.
Got a problem with my post, take it up with the moderators. They may award you the butthurt badge.
Yeh and you take your whinge to his son. Nah, not your style.
What does that one look like?
Respect/decency here on BG where nothing or nobody is sacred….BB ,FFS , it was just a negative comment…the whole Ugg boot thing is just a minor detail…….how about when Greeny ran an Ugg boot Co at the end of the 60. I bought it off him in 74″……and he want onto create Quikbuck…
Good on Shane for his colonial award!
Fuck ’em brutus. If they want to post shit like that then I will spend a minute to tell them that they are shitheads. Can’t be bothered with the usual load of nonsense here but that comment pissed me off.
He may never have been flavour of the month with the trendsetters but he had a reputation as the best employer in the business, and with shapers and designers like Ted Spencer Terry Fitzgerald and Simon Anderson, a lot of great boards came out of that factory.
Registering a generic name as a trademark mark and selling it isn’t inventing
lol, yea – but cunt made heaps !
There’s a lesson there somewhere….
Beef & Beer & Sheep to the podium, please…also buy the plastic inserts…
A Dane in the life…
Chapter 9…skip 11…
Sea Fever
By John Masefield
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
valhalla and counsell bluffs…in,,,New Hampshire~
https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx….
no dicks…no ice cream…normalize yu’ sef or ur out…