Billabong Pro Teahupoo The Outsider: American Primitive

In: Billabong Pro Teahupoo by Steve Shearer 14 Comments Fri 12th Aug '11

Tags: billabong pro teahupoo , tahiti , The Outsider

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"When you're in a rut you've gotta get out of it"
-The Ruts.

In our last instalment we boldly predicted that after suffering the twin wounds to his pride of missing J-Bay and not spearing a huge South Pacific tube at maxing Cloudbreak, Mr Robert Slater was psychologically re-arming and preparing to go Gonzo in Tahiti. That prediction came to fruition in stunning fashion, but not in the gaping blue caverns of Teahupoo. Instead Slater schooled the Mod Col in So. Cal beachbreaks in a stunning display of dominance that was only questioned in a quarter final heat with Taj Burrow.

In French Polynesia they are waking to the rooster crows. Small fires are burning and smoke is drifting out to sea in pale sheets in the morning stillness. The land is theirs, it has chickens and pigs, papaya, mango, banana, lime and other fruits. The land is food, and property. It is good land, fertile and robust and it is theirs. They are walking on their land, these men with names like music: Taumata, Tamaroa, Manoa, Raimana, Hearii. Their mothers are smiling gently with sensuous enigmatic lips and their fathers are taciturn and dignified.

Their sons will make money from surfing, or they will grow out of it and go fishing, or tend the land. It is good they go surfing. It makes their hearts swell with pride that they will surf in this contest. They will take on the rest of the world and maybe win and that is good. For Tahiti, for themselves, but above all, for the family.

Without surfing there is too much drinking, too much trouble, sometimes from drinking. Fighting and bad things. Surfing is clean and winning is good for the family. Surfing is purpose and dance, prestige and money for the family. It has been good for Tahiti, good for their sons.

London is burning and the world is in turmoil, they can see it on their TV's but the trees here are laden with papaya and the chickens are scratching in the leaf litter. They have the land. And the land provides food. The white man has no land, he has money instead. The men are driving small boats across the glassy waters of the lagoon, to the roiling whitewater on the reefs. They could hear it booming and cracking like thunder in the night.

Clouds are coagulating on the razor-sharp ridges, gently bleeding a soft mist of rain. Shafts of sunlight pierce through this gauzy tissue of moisture, trailing through the valley like the filaments of the tropic-bird tail. The men are looking at this but no thoughts cloud their mind for they are in a kind of trance. A soft meditative stillness is in their hearts: this is their home and its beauty makes men full of quiet love.

A flotilla of flying fish leap out of the water, scattering morning sunlight to the heavens from the stiff shards of their quivering wings.

They are near the reef now. They drop the motor to an idle as they approach the channel. A vast blue wall concaves then explodes into a watery cavern, engorging itself on oxygen and light, full of doom and splendour, roaring like a snarling savage beast. The sight of this touches the men like the razor sharp edge of a knife blade, sending their souls icy cold then fiery hot. It unleashes a wild caustic warbling in their blood, some ancient war-like memory of challenge and response.

They cross themselves, mutter a little prayer and look deep into the ocean. They all think of Malik and his wave and the memory of his passing serves not to weaken them with the reminder of impending death but to insulate them from it's icy presence. He had died for them, in body, but they feel the presence of his soul and it is joyous and encouraging.

The men with musical names ride the massive caverns for hours. No-one falls. They plunge over the ledge and emerge slack-shouldered, heads bowed to whoops and war-cries. There are camera-men who don't film the brown men because they are not sponsored but the wounded pride felt by the elite men standing at the top of the Teahupoo tree is overwhelmed by euphoria and camaraderie. Icy old Hinanos are flowing as the sun sets across the lagoon and in each of the men there is a deep, insistent question whispering in their blood: What was that beautiful thing that just happened?

Across the Pacific and the great and multifarious landscape of the decaying sole superpower in the world, in the streets of the greatest city in the world which is called New York City there is panic and confusion. On a grimy street corner surrounded by a vast jumbled wasteland of bridges, railroad tracks, warehouses, wharves and whatnot, and populated by a scurrying mass of insects in human form a man on skid row is panhandling. He looks up at a poster proclaiming a surf contest next month and wonders if that will turn his luck.

He thrusts a can in front of a passing man and croaks "Hey mister, spare a dime for a cup of coffee?"

(Photo of Teahupoo courtesy Robertson/Billabong)

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