Historian Matt Warshaw weighs in on “squalid surf comedy” of “bungled hit job” at world junior surfing titles

"Allow the surfers to touch each other. Encourage it. Let my opponent look at me and say 'Let’s fight it out to the end.'"

You’d need to be a lot deeper in the competitive surfing weeds than I am these days to have seen, live, the bungled hit job Erica Maximo of Portugal laid on Australian Willow Hardy during a four-surfer repecharge heat at the recent ISA World Junior Championships in El Salvador.

The set-up is a little complicated (read here), but basically time was running down and Hardy needed a low score to advance.

Maximo herself was out of contention, but her teammate would be eliminated if Hardy got the score, so Maximo decided to sabotage Hardy final wave and take the interference, to ensure her friend would advance.

The result was a squalid bit of surf comedy. Maximo, paddling out, turns around and sneaks into the wave behind the already-riding Hardy. Maximo rides prone for a bit, stands, and immediately shoves and bumps rails with Hardy, who is now hopping and turning as she looks for the score; Maximo then leans forward and yells something at Hardy. A few moments later, falling off her board, Maximo reaches out and tries to pull Hardy’s leash.

The Aussie, somehow, remains unfazed throughout. The response was swift. Online uproar, public shaming, official statements, DQ for Maximo, followed by her tearful Instagram apology.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Surfing Republica (@surfingrepublica)

If you’re jaded enough to see humor in this woeful little pas de deux, as I am, do we also agree that the best part is the announcer, lashed to surfing’s Wall of Positive Noise (or Positive Void, in this case), absolutely refusing to call the action?

“Blue up and riding, 45 second remaining.”

Mayhem onscreen—silence on the mic. Time passes.

“Thirty-five seconds.” More dead air.

“Twenty-five seconds.”

Continued silence as the rides finally plays out, with Hardy stepping off her board, turning, and flipping off Maximo. She got the score. Her result helped push Australia to victory in the Teams competition.

What would Peter Drouyn think?

More specifically, how would he score it?

Drouyn is remembered today for many things, and although I wish his actual wave-riding were ranked higher among his achievements—for five or six years, beginning in 1966, Drouyn was a dark horse contender in any robust world’s-best-surfer debate—I suppose his greatest gift was to promote surfing’s one-on-one competition format.

You silverbacks out there will recall that this happened in 1977, at the debut Stubbies Pro, held in fantastic overhead point tubes at Burleigh Heads. What you may not know is that Drouyn had what he thought was another ace up his kimono: Contact surfing.

“We’re gonna see guys trying to make it through to the next round any way they can,” Drouyn said to Phil Jarratt before the Stubbies contest while discussing the new “effective cheating” rules Peter had just unveiled.

The conversation continued:

Meanwhile, the judges are still awarding points for surfing, the same way they would in a standard competition.
It’s surfing in two categories, yes—physical and creative. The cheating rule is there to give the contest character.

By “character” you mean…
A bit of bloody flair. Something more concrete than what you get in a regular contest; some contact, physical and mental. The surfers need to vibrate off each other in a way that the judges and the spectators can really feel and appreciate. Like in boxing. Allow the surfers to touch each other. Encourage it. Let my opponent look at me and say “Fuck you,” or ”I love you,” or “Let’s fight it out to the end.” Let’s have some contact.

But surely you’re not suggesting that surfing is a real contact sport?
Phil, it can be. I feel it’s the only way surfing is going to become a big money sport. Contact both physically and mentally. A blow must be thrown. I mean, I can dance around a ring for my whole heat, showing style, but what’s the judge going to say? “Oh, Drouyn’s got a lot of style. He would have done well if there’d been a fight.” There must be contact in surfing. A guy can actually whip his opponent off the wave, and they come onto the beach and have a fight if they like. That’s okay. We won’t give any bonus points for it, but the important thing is that they can beat each other up.



One-on-one heats were a hit, contact surfing was not, and I think we all agree that was the right way to go. But credit Drouyn for keeping things interesting and entertaining—for always giving us, as promised, “a bit of bloody flair.”

Here we are 50-something years later having a laugh at the idea—but we’re also fascinated by an Instagram clip of two young CT hopefuls going at each other just as Drouyn envisioned in 1977, which maybe doesn’t prove his point, exactly, although I’d say it pretty strongly makes the case that surf competition by and large remains, as Peter suggests, a quart or two low on flair.

(I’m of the firm belief that Matt Warshaw, along with Dane Reynolds, John John Florence, Stephanie Gilmore, Matt Biolos and a few others, is a keeper of the surf culture flame. These weekly essays are sent to subscribers of Warshaw’s Encyclopedia of Surfing. You can join the club, here, and you should, for five bucks a month or fifty for the year. It’s a million-plus word archive you can bury yourself in for years.)