Steve Shearer February 27, 2009

I left the Ox in the dark.

The cattle were lowing in the nearby paddock and a soft rain was falling. I had only two things on my mind: get to the contest site in time for the free brekky and get set-up before the first heat featuring Dane Reynolds. Well, there was the slight problem of Greek sovereign debt weighing heavily on the combined European economies, but that seemed of minor import compared to the more pressing concerns of freeloading and catching the Messiah in action.

Yes, I've swallowed the Reynolds kool-aid and I wanted to see the man, balls deep in the belly of the beast, and watch him transform the experience by his peculiar brand of artistic yearning into the new model of professional surfing.

There was a frisson of excitement at the venue. High tide, with some west in the wind coming up the face, with a minute to go till the heat started Jordy Smith pulled a set wave from behind the rock and executed a power carve of such precision and speed the rooster tail seemed to hang in the pre-hooter air like a premonition. Dane saw it, thats for sure.

For those familiar with Marine Layer, Dane's blog, his board choice made perfect sense: a short pulled in swallow tail, flat-rockered twinfin plus trailer. Dane started going for massive turns, full rail hacks and finners with mixed results. For some reason these waves aren't on heats on demand. He let his frustration become obvious as he failed to really get hold of one.

I was frustrated too...there was a sense that Dane was here to make a statement about generational change, and instead of the irrefutable evidence that has been gathering over the Californian winter the sentence was garbled and confused. A drunk poet slurring the words to a masterpiece.

Slater was in heat five. I was near the toilets on the hill when he ambled over with a small dark-haired girl in tow. He had two boards under his arm. A small McKee set-up swallow-tailed quad and a board in a cloth cover. As he walked by me I said in a low conspiratorial voice " How big's the quad Kelly?" He turned to look at me. I had a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt on (fake from Chinatown in KL) and a large felt hat with dark glasses. He decided it was safe to answer, "Five-seven" he said. "Good", I rejoined "excellent length". And then as he was walking away I said a little too loudly "Have a good competition Kelly". "Thanks man", he said, whilst the girl remained silent.

At the bottom of the stairs he stopped and chatted to Cheyne Horan, and then moved on to the competitors area. I moved in on Cheyne and asked him what he thought of Kelly's boards. This is what he told me: " I told him to just ride normal boards in the comps. Do all your experimentation and stuff outside the comps. That was the mistake I made"

Kelly came out and made a major statement of his own. He fucken electrified a crowd that till that time had been waiting for a performance to stir the blood. Up till then the judges hadn't awarded over a six but Slater's opening gambit received a seven-plus. Check it out. I thought he was riding the little quad, but as he ran around a gushing English girl with fogged up glasses was swooning "Oh my god, oh my god"...whilst her Dad in a thick Yorkshire accent kept repeating "Ere 'e is love...thassim....go on...get a bit closer then, go on love!".....I had to maul my way through them to see his stick: a stock standard swallow tail thruster with centre stringer. He listened to Cheyne! God bless him.

Mick Fanning is now a contest robot. True or false? Well that is what the internet heroes are saying. Saying he's just a boring old hack with one turn in his reportoire. Don't worry I will ask him that in person before this shooting match is through. But after Mick's world title defining performance he was exuding such an over-powering 'dont fuck with me aura', I shied away from the media scrum surrounding him to wait for a more serendipitous meeting a la Kelly. Mick looked awesome. I watched the heat with Jason 'Lips' Gale, a Snapper Rocks stalwart who told me Joel was hopping mad and that Joel and Mick, if found in the same room, would be occupying opposite corners. All off the record off course...

Joel looked fit. Joel looked strong and ripped and relaxed. He won easily with barreling 4-5 footers behind the rocks. By the way, whoever wrote the copy on the ASP website saying it was 2-3 feet is a jackass that needs to step outside and look at the surf. By low tide it was a gurgling, slabbing, extremely difficult to negotiate line-up. Joel did enough without dominating like Kelly and Mick.

I did interview Joel after his heat because he looked more approachable than Mick so I felt braver. I wanted to know whether Joel felt any pressure from generational change, perhaps reflected in the new judging criteria. He was emphatic in his enthusiasm for the new criteria.

I asked him how hard it was to keep your foot on the pyschological and physical accelerator through an extended period of time. It seemed to throw him. He paused and considered, "well I could wake up tomorrow and decide to retire", he laughed before walking off. "Hey, don't do that Joel".....I turned to the Japanese and Brazilian and fat Channel Nine cameraman beside me, " he's got a world title to win for fucks sake".

I saw Carroll again. His synopsis: People were putting on more of a show than normal for Rd 1.

My synopsis of his synopsis : "No fucken shit Sherlock".

Of course I didn't say that to his face though.....I just pulled out my gold leopard skin pen and rubbed my chin thoughtfully with it. You have to listen to Carroll, even if he is part of some old guard that is going to be extinct in, oh, five years time. It's in the contract. I wouldn't listen to any of those wankers from STAB though, not unless it was for fashion advice.

Bede pulled some massive turns. He feels slighted by the American Press and the Industry and Internet Goons and has a point to prove and he'll damm well let his surfing do the talking. There were people with points to prove all over the place. Enormous muscle bound men with ornate Tahitian tattoos and scars from the last UFC bout they were in. A lady with a pneumatic breast and a diaphonous singlet top wet from the rain draped over it like body paint walked past in the drizzling rain whilst I was standing on the hill with David 'Baddy' Treloar. "Bit different to Morning of the Earth. hey Baddy" I said with a wink.

"Oh mate", he said "you've got no fucken idea." He was here to root on his homeboy Dan Ross. And Dan, despite his underdog status, tries hard, but to be honest, just makes too many mistakes for a journeyman on the wrong side of a new generation.

Owen Wright made mistakes too. Serious ones. He caught one of the waves of the day; a thick barrelling steam train composed of half sand, half water and tried to pull an upside-down snap in the bowels of the beast. He dropped out of the lip and the thing dumped on him like a load of cement. I was standing next to Noel Graham, the local surf shop proprietor and winner of a contest or two in his day. He groaned. "That was a ten point ride" I said. But Owen kept surfing and the waves kept coming and he got his barrel and surfed with power and flair and won his heat. He walked past in the rain, newly minted as a WCT surfer and in a moment of delicious schadenfreude I notice he stands a whole foot taller than his companion; the Surfing Journalist Nick Carroll.

The Rainbow Bay bar was pumping. Chris Davidson came out of the crowd and slapped my hand hard in a handshake. I met Davo on his first Hawaiian trip, with Bylesy and I always have spare change in my heart for these proto-typical surfing animals. "This is just the start Davo, just the start! Take this all the fucken way"

Melling conked and with a beer count of zero I headed for home, the mighty head of the Ox, through the teeming rain in a cockroach infested van and finally the problem of Greek sovereign debt assumes primacy in my consciousness.

See Adam Weathered's photos from Day One

Past words from The Outsider:

Trials Day