Billabong Pro Teahupoo The Outsider: Bruce Would Go

In: Billabong Pro Teahupoo by Steve Shearer 40 Comments Tue 23rd Aug '11

Tags: billabong pro teahupoo , tahiti , surf forecasting

"I'll be your mirror, reflect who you are. In case you don't know" - The Velvet Underground and Nico.

"There must be surfers calling to run the comp on these perfect mid-sized laydays," I asked head judge Pritamo Ahrendt.

Pritamo is one of the triumvirate of Teahupoo power brokers, along with surfers rep Kieren Perrow and contest director Chris O'Callahan, responsible for staring at the kind of perfect, hollow South Pacific reef-pass surf that fans would cut of their left nut to witness and then calling the contest off for the day.

"Not one?" I pressed incredulously.

"Nah," he said. "They're all staring it down and waiting for it to get big."

"They've gotta be shitting themselves right?"

"Oh, they're all scared..."

Pritamo was dripping wet after a surf session. He's been surfing himself silly at Chopes. A superbly competent goofyfoot, I watched Pritamo get buried by a thick beast yesterday. As he said, this is so far away from being easy it's not funny.

"The other thing," he continued, "is that we don't want guys surfing 4-6 foot waves and getting through Round 2 when they don't really deserve to be out there in the big stuff. The guys who get through are going to have to demonstrate mastery in the big stuff. Simple."

There ya go, as a collective the ASP Top 32 are holding their nerve. Yet as individuals we will see catastrophic collapses of that nerve in the heat of battle. And this is a battle, let us be absolutely clear on that point.

You've got to admire the ASP's temerity in staring down some of the best layday surf ever seen. Christ, I paddled out across the sheet glass lagoon around mid-morning yesterday. In the distance I could see the expulsions of spray ejected from blue compression chambers hanging in the still tropical air like whales breath. It was perfect. There were around ten pros surfing playful 4 foot surf. Within half and hour the surf had jumped to 4-6 foot with waves so tubular and perfect it bedazzled the mind.

Then without warning the pack came over a small hump and behind it was a wall of water, draining the hump back into itself as it surged on the back ledge. Everyone was motoring to get under it. I duckdived this enormous cylindrical cavern that was sucking so hard I briefly thought I would get sucked back over the falls. That is not a manoeuvre to be attempted at proper Teahupoo. A young Tahitian went backwards over the falls in 2000 and had his skull crushed and back broken on impact. RIP Briece Taerea.

Suddenly the line-up seemed to thin. My heart was pounding. I overheard Julian Wilson asking what to do when caught inside. "Take your leash off and swim for your life," said Dan Ross. I felt a bit faint. I'd already had one of the best barrels of my life and a sickening wipeout that rattled me like a truncheon blow to the back of the head.

You think you might want a piece of proper Teahupoo. I tell you, you don't. You're dreaming. And you are not alone. I watched some of the best surfers in the world look the other way when the next set came. A solid 8 footer that stood up so blue and glassy and irrefutably heavy. You don't see 'em coming. You feel a draining of the ocean, as if a tsunami was imminent and then there is this wall snaking and draining and you are paddling for your life with your heart in your mouth and old Sal Masekelas's relaxed gluteus maximii are clenched as tight as steel cables in case you make caca in your boardshorts.

I saw Owen Wright huck over the ledge and as he dropped in I looked over my shoulder and saw a huge thick cavern well in advance of him and the reef seemed to spring out of the shallow ocean floor like the protruding fangs of some mythical beast. Owen came out with the spit down the end of the reef. Julian got a beast but it was Dan Ross who snagged the heaviest one. Don't be surprised if Rossy steps up big-time against Bourez.

'Got to get out of here' was my sole thought. I managed, for the sake of what was left of my confidence, to sneak a 6 footer before sitting in the safety of the channel. Strange feelings assailed me as I paddled pack to shore. My identity had been crushed and scattered into the infinite expanse of ocean, and I didn't know what would come back into its place. Teahupoo had been judge, jury and executioner for my spirit and the sentence passed seemed as inscrutable and implacable as the clouds drifting over the razorback ridges.

And this was a layday.

Teahupoo village was asleep as I walked back in the early afternoon heat. Nothing moved. The chickens were resting in the dirt, a lazy cockerel attempted to crow and abandoned the attempt. I felt like an atomic particle adrift in the cosmic dust of an incomprehensible universe. The world is going to rack and ruin and in the general malaise the once mighty surf corporations are getting slaughtered in a marketplace that has suddenly turned hostile. There will be collateral damage.

More thoughts came as I slowly pounded the pavement home: Sportswriters have no business getting in the ring with their subjects. Especially when that subject can insult, maim and kill with the most beautiful impudence.

But one person who does have some business in this ring is Bruce Irons. I conduct my journalism in the old school way, which is without phones or motor vehicles. I wander around, sit under a shady tree and see who walks past. I shared some space with a tattooed Tahitian man, a boat driver, which helped restore my disturbed equilibrium. It didn't take long to make out the familiar figure of Joel Parkinson coming in from a surf session. "Seen Bruce, Joel?"I asked.

"Not today, he went surfing some other pass."

"Tell me, you think he should be in this comp?"

Joel narrowed his eyes and fixed me with a steely glare. "I think he should be in it."

"Does he wanna be in it?"

"Hell yeah, that's all we've been talking about. Bruce would go."

Bruce's whereabouts are currently unknown. There's been no representation from Bruce or his people to the ASP. Whether he has approached Billabong remains an unknown at this point in time. An elegant compromise could be an expression session on the big day surfed by Bruce and friends in honour of Andy.

It's now gone small and onshore in Tahiti. The bad winds are the first physical signs that the swell is coming. The exuberant French lady making coffee at the mariner is ecstatic to see me. She speaks French rapidly and enthusiastically until I sheepishly put my finger and thumb up. "Francais...un petit pou."

Her husband, the manager of the Teahupoo fishermans co-op, laughs uproariously. He is round and bald, with great bulging eyes like a bull-frog. He puts his spectacles back on and returns to the cross-word. His countenance is serene, his soul untroubled by the days ahead. The boats are moored in the marina. As I'm walking away the coffee lady runs after me. "Monseuir, monsieur!"

She hands me a strange fruit I have never seen before. It is the shape and size of a human heart. I swear I felt it palpitating in my hand.

"Quelle horreur!"