I’m in the very north of Scotland at the O’Neill Coldwater Classic, it’s a 6 star prime WQS event. The surf is pumping, Thurso’s 6ft but its fucking freezing!
The standard of surfing at this event has been unreal, everyone rips and every heat looks daunting. There’s a large group of Brits milling around up here and they all seem to be able to mix it with the best of them. Russ and Sam have been smashing their way through a few heats, Russ is the last Brit still in the contest, he’s through to the round of 16. Micah, Oli, Nate and Matt have been putting on good show at a few of the local slabs, scoring a few sick sessions.
I managed to drag the boys away their favourite wave, tear Sam off the webcast and grab Russ just before his next heat. I stuck them all in the back of a van and quizzed them on British surfing.
Right boys I want to know what a young Brit grom would have to do to become a pro surfer?
Nate – Not go off the rails too much
Russ – Haha yeah not hang out in Newquay
Matt – Do a lot of travelling
Unknown – Suck a lot of cock
All Laughing
Sam – I cant believe you said that ?, that’s awful
Oli – O my god
Micah- They’ve got to start competing at a young age. Start doing the local comps then build up to the National comps, then eventually start doing the worlds and the pro juniors.
Sam – I think first of all you’ve got to be lucky enough to be genetically gifted. All of us sitting here have that inherent talent, you know it’s not by accident that we’re good surfers, I reckon you start by having something a little bit special, you know, you’ve got to have a certain amount of natural coordination and talent and then the question is what you do with it. I think that’s the interesting part.
Do you think it’s important to have a professional approach from a young age, or is that something that develops later on?
Nate – Just get out there and have fun
Matt – Yeah you just want to have fun when you’re young
Nate – Have a laugh, do a lot of travelling, meet new people, surf, party, but try and keep your err head together.
Oli – ha ha!
Russ – I think that what sort of set me apart from the rest is that when I was about 12,13,14,15, you know before I started partying hard and stuff, arr I was training and stuff like that, in the surf all the time, doing little heats by myself, practicing all the time, surfing waves all the way to the beach, all sorts of stuff.
WILL – So you were pretty focused early on?
Sam – From such a young age?
Russ – Yeah from like 12/13, I was constantly amping on it, thinking about it, watching surf videos. I don’t even watch surf videos now but I used to be completely obsessed by it. So I think that definitely separates you, if you’re making all those extra efforts, all those things that the other kids aren’t doing, you’re going to progress faster and stand out.
Micah – With what Russ is saying about being focused, it’s true. I mean talent will only get you so far, somewhere like the Gold coast there’s a shit load of kids with heaps of talent, it’s the ones that focus and train that develop into great surfers. Talent will only get you so far.
Sam – When I was a kid growing up I loved surfing but the guys that were successful in my eyes were the doctors and lawyers, they were the ones with the big houses and nice cars. I never realised I could make a living out of surfing back then!
How can you at such a young age think this is going to be my job!
Matt – I just wanted to have fun and it just seemed to keep progressing.
Oli – I guess I was the same but like what Russ was saying, from like 8 years old I wanted to be a pro surfer. I’ve always wanted it so bad, I’ve always done everything I could to get to where I am now. I’ve always known I don’t have as much talent as the Mick Fannings and people like that, but I always knew that if I worked as hard as I could at it I could get to the point where I could make a living.
Nate – I used to try and get to as many contests as I could and get out of Wales. It was pretty much only me from my area doing the UK contests sort of thing, all my mates weren’t that interested.
WILL – A small scene
Nate – Yeah a really small scene and surrounded by party animals you basically had to detatch yourself from it all and get out of Wales.
You’re all from a few different places around the UK. What was the scene like where you grew up?
Sam – Slightly isolated at Newcastle, you felt pretty removed from the surfing world, we just did our own thing, but we had a cool little crew.
Micah – Mine’s completely different, I grew up on the Gold coast. Going surfing was easy, you don’t need a wetsuit because the water’s always warm. There’s local boardriders contests and a whole structure in place with coaching available, yeah the surf scene is massive over there.
Nate – Pretty wild in Wales, not a big contest scene!
Was there a turning point where you realised you could make money and a living from surfing?
Mat – Yeah
Oli – Mine was from when I was 8, I’ve never thought I couldn’t do it, from the word go.
Matt – From when I was about 12 or something. When you first start to go good in national contests and stuff, you realise you can make a good living from it.
Russ – I never really thought about the money side of it. It was just, when you’re that young, I mean now you think about the money when you’re a bit older, but back then even at 17,18 I was never thinking about money. I just wanted to be on tour, wanted to surf the best waves with the best guys in the world you know, and that was kind of my aim.
Nate – When I was about 12 my Mum and Dad started taking me to all the contests and I started travelling.
Russ – I met Simon Law around thirteen and he was my hero, he stayed at my house and I just wanted to be him, at that time he was such a professional, stretching in the mornings eating healthily. So that set me off you know, I knew then that’s what I wanted to be.
Sam – I think I’m about 10 years behind everyone! I didn’t realise I could make a living out of surfing until I was about 21, after I finished Uni and then, you know you get lemons you make lemonade, you work with what you’ve got, It was almost an after thought. When I was a kid, same as you guys I watched all the videos, Kelly Slater in Black n White, watched how he was surfing and worked on my technique but not really with any purpose in mind, I think that’s the main difference between someone like myself and Russ and Oli is that I’ve never had that goal to become a professional surfer.
How important were contest to you, or were you more interested in free surfing?
Oli – It was everything, contests. It was all I thought about, I didn’t care about anything else. All I wanted to do was compete, when my mum couldn’t take me to the contest I used to catch buses all around the country, you know, from the age of about 12.
Nate – Yeah the comps were pretty important, you can’t just hang out at your local beach and think your killing it, cos, when you get down to Newquay and that, and see all the boys ripping it’s pretty hard. You have to put yourself against the best, then if you get a few results you’ll get amped.
Matt – Im sort of a bit different ay, I always wanted to go out there and just surf and have fun. Growing up at North Narrabeen the boardriders was so competitive it was more fun for me to get out there and just enjoy it instead of focusing on events.
You’ve all had really successful contest careers, are you all still as focused on contest?
Russ – Nar, obviously I’ve got a 6 month old baby boy and that’s sort of taken most of my time up now, and after breaking my wrist last year that sort of took me out of everything and my seeding went down, that made the decision to slow down on the tour, and also couldn’t really afford to do it any more really so yeah.
Sam – Just as a side point, what happens if you win this event and pick up 3500 points and get a second sword, are you going be back on it, or is it just a nice little highlight of the year?
Russ – Well
Matt – Back on it, can’t say no to that!
Russ – I’m not going answer that question yet
Are contests essential, or could you get away with just free surfing?
Matt – Yeah contests are essential
Sam – I think personally that if you’re a free surfer and just do photos and don’t have any sort of contest results to back it up it almost feels like a hoax! You can only pretend to be something for so long. All of us here have had big results and have proven that we can actually surf, it’s the only true way to show that you can actually surf.
Oli – Anyone can go out and do throw away airs and get good shots over and over and over, there’s actually a lot of guys like that.
Sam – Even someone like Rasta the ultimate free surfer, you can’t forget that when he was a junior he beat Parko and Fanning.
Micah – He won the junior world title.
Sam – He’s got the results to back it up, you need that!
Micah – When I was younger, contests were a way of improving your surfing, contests are something you can pour you energy into and also rate yourself. What Sam said is true, you kind of do have to prove yourself with contests, but there’s a lot of guys out there that don’t. Look at Josh Kerr, he said screw it. He went out there did all those air contests but just for fun. Now he’s got himself that good that he’s changed over from free surfing to contest surfing, you see a lot of guys doing that now. Also Jamie O’brian, you can see that he rips from the videos, he’s done a few comps like Pipe. Cameras can lie but videos don’t.
Oli – Don’t give him too much props, he might read this and his head is big enough already!
All laughing
Russ – It’s kind of a weird one, those guys Jamie and Rasta did try it for 3 or something years but couldn’t hack it, couldn’t make their heats, so they did try that you can see that’s where they wanted to be, they wanted to make the tour and they couldn’t, so they’ve gone back to the free surfing stuff, with them they don’t need it.
With what Nate said about thinking you’re killing it at your local break, how important is foreign travel?
Oli – If you want to progress in surfing, there’s only so much you can learn from the people in your circle, you need to get out there and see what everyone else is doing. But on the other side, a lot of it is confidence, if you’re only surfing in your local area you constantly think about what they’re doing in California and Australia, it’s almost enough to make you stay at home. But as soon as you get out there and see it all, you realise that yeah they are ripping but they aren’t as high up on that pedestal as you put them.
Will – You don’t think the gaps as big as people think?
Oil – That’s kind of a problem with British surfing, people think we’re just shit and that everyone else is so much better, but when you get out there and see it there’s not that big a difference.
Sam – Yeah but you have to do the work to close the gap.
Oil – Yeah exactly
Sam – You have to travel and train. I think professional surfing has changed over the last 5 years, you don’t get to the top by accident anymore, you have to be a young kid with talent who puts in the hours training and the analysis, you know it doesn’t happen by accident anymore. If you’re a young kid who wants to make it in professional surfing you better get serious pretty soon.
At what age did you all start training, specifically for surfing?
Sam- I think we all trained differently, Russ and Oli had this focus from a really young age.
Russ – I used to watch Rocky.
Everyone laughing.
Russ – Just the final bit, Rocky, hit the punch bag and then go for a surf, that’s what I used to do.
More Laughing.
Russ – Arr fuck, that’s what I used to do, don’t worry about me.
Nate – When I was about sixteen I used to do a bit of circuit training and stuff
Sam – Really?
Nate – Yeah I did, yeah! You know Tim Jones, the guy that’s got that surf school in Lanza?
Russ- Yeah yeah
Nate – He used to live in Llantwit, coach me a bit and do some surf training with me.
Matt – I did a load of surf coach training with Barton Lynch at the Northern Beaches, I was about 12 when I started and yeah it was good. The guys that we were doing all the training with were people like, Kai Otten, Dayyan Neve, Zarn Foxton and Jay Quinn, so it was good training with them, pushing your surfing.
Sam – No wonder you guys all surf so good, I thought you just rocked up at the beach and went surfing, everyone here seems to have taken it pretty seriously from an early age.
Damn it, what was I doing in Newcastle?
Do you think surfers have a bad reputation for being unprofessional?
Russ – Maybe in the past, but now everyone is so serious.
Oli - That last generation was pretty on it with the partying.
Russ – My generation was yeah, I was watching people like Shaun Thompson growing up and then I went on tour with people like Barton Lynch and Simon Law and all those lot, and they were just, it was just mental, full parties and that’s what we grew up with.
Now you’re on tour with people taking nutritionists and masseurs with them, so it’s completely changed. Its definitely the way forward you know, less drugs and drinking and all that, which is good.
Micah – Everyone still loves that part of the lifestyle though, everyone’s professional about everything, but the boys still love it and have fun. They just aren’t like that the night before the event anymore.
Sam – Getting steaming once in a while
Oli – They’re celebrating now when they do well, instead of going mad every time they get knocked out of a heat.
Nate – Everyone loves it
Micah – Yeah they seem to be doing it at the right times instead of doing it…
Russ – All the time
Laughter
Nate – So who are these people we’re talking about?
Russ – Who we talking about here?
Oli – Just the gerneral population on the QS I suppose
Russ – The CT
Nate – yeah and CT
Matt – Some people have that mentality where they can do it.
Micah – Surfing is just all in your head ay, I’ve seen guys go out, get on the drink all night, next day paddle out combo everyone and win the event, then there’s the guys that went to bed at 10 losing in their first heat, some people can do that, they find a way to focus and it just works.
Russ- Yeah I’ve been on tour, in Durban, been out the night before, woken up at 6, heats in the water, run down hungover, got in the water and scored 9s. I’ve done it you know, but it can only take you so far and then especially when you get older you can’t do that anymore.
What sort of preparation do you have for contests and free surfs?
Sam – You just have to try and put yourself in a good mental space, if you feel comfortable, ready, fit, whether through training or psychology, you need to be in good head space.
Micah – I agree, it all comes down to self belief and confidence, and to help you achieve that you train, if your fitter your going to be able to paddle harder in bigger waves and in heats. You know your going to be able to paddle out faster than the other guy and get the next set, it all comes down to confidence.
Nate – Just watch rocky and listen to slip not.
Laughing.
Any last bit of advice for a young grom?
Micah – Keep at it because sooner or later an opportunity will come along
Sam – Go for it with your whole heart and give it everything
Nate – Try and stay fit and focused, do as many comps as you can, travel and get out of the UK as much as you can.
Russ – Yeah the same, focus, and when I start coaching you can come to the Russell Winter Elite Surfing Academy and get coached by me.
Oil – Utilise the waves we’ve got on our doorstep, we’ve got some of the best waves in the world, they might not be in Cornwall but they’re in driving distance, get to these waves!
Matt – Get out there and give it a dig.
