Surf Athletes
We all like to think we are surfers who “could have” made it. These surf athletes actually are making it. From underground heroes to rising groms – this is where we lay bare the best talent in the country.
On September 3, 2010, Andy Irons won the Billabong Pro at Teahupoo, Tahiti. Two months later, on November 2, 2010, one of the world’s greatest surfers was found dead, lying on his back in a bed, sheets pulled up, in a hotel in Grapevine, Texas. That’s about the centre of......
The twelve-strong New Zealand Junior Surfing Team heads off to the United States next week to compete at the 2018 VISSLA ISA World Junior Surfing Championship. Held at Huntington Beach, California, the New Zealand team is fresh out of the National Scholastic Surfing Championships event where nine surfers competed. Three of......
A late-season swell offers one last roll of the dice for New Zealand’s big-wave riders and the stakes are high. As the winds swing through the ideal bearing the focus falls on a reef on a remote corner of coastline. Four teams of surfers get the session of a lifetime.......
In a sheltered bay off the end of the Kaikoura Peninsula columns of bubbles spill out of the sea floor like shimmering mercury and make their way to the surface. It’s a dazzling display, like a scene that belongs in Wonderland. This is Hope Springs, aptly named, and just one......
Bobbing around on a jet ski near a reef off the southernmost tip of New Zealand’s South Island it dawned on me that I had been drawn here like a moth to a flame. Each passing set of waves grew in size and intensity and started to look more like......
There is no question that the Gold Coast of Australia has become the hotbed of surf talent in the Southern Hemisphere. It has such a concentration of talent that when one of its fabled sandy points break, no waves go unridden and the menu is barrels, airs and fully buried......
Friday is our last day in Fiji. It is a day of mixed emotions. Firstly, it is sad to leave the friends we’ve made but nice to know we’ll soon return to our families and friends. Our boatman Felipé has a tear in his eye as he hugs each of......
It’s one of those swells. Every ten minutes a pulse that gets you excited, but in between a calm pool of blue with the occasional rideable ripple. It’s been like this all week with the same crew hunting the sets on the favourable tide led by Josh Thickpenny and Luke......