FANTASY SURFER: Billabong Pro Tahiti 2005

IT’S NOT JUST MAN ON MAN

Teahupoo delivered once. Will it happen again?

WHEN the Billabong Pro Tahiti finally hits the water tomorrow on an expected combination of 3-6’ swell from both the WSW and SW, it’s going to be a welcome occasion for most. For others it will be a forbidding and even torturous test of personal fortitude. For many the heats will not be challenges against other surfers, but confrontations with self.

On paper, there are many great exchanges set down for tomorrow’s hopeful round one opening of the event. The Foster’s Men’s World Tour Top 45 are literally just that – 45 of the world’s most talented surfers, and many of the very best are pitted against each other in the 30-minute three-man heats scheduled from 7.30am in the morning.

As always, many of the big names are clustered around the middle of the draw. We have three former Billabong Pro Tahiti winners in heats six, seven and eight. Twice runner-up and defending event champion here at Teahupoo, CJ Hobgood (USA) has former Pipeline finalist and charger Phil Macdonald (AUS), as well as Renan Rocha (BRZ) who broke the long standing stranglehold of Brazilian trepidation at Pipeline several seasons back.

Heat eight is a blinder, former event champion and now three-times world champion Andy Irons (HAW) drawing his elder iconic peer Sunny Garcia (HAW) , and local barrel wizard Manoa Drollet (TAH). Joel Parkinson (AUS) is in heat nine against Victoria’s pigdog growler Troy Brooks, and veteran goofy Liam McNamara (HAW) who came through with Drollet from the Air Tahiti Nui Von Zipper Trials tow weeks ago.

Current ratings leader and former Billabong Pro Tahiti semi-finalist Trent Munro (AUS) has his NSW north coast mate Darren O’Rafferty , as well as Billabong’s talented local wildcard Hira Terinatoofa. The fighting fit Mick Fanning (AUS) has the fearless Jake Paterson (AUS) and Huntington’s rookie Tim Reyes. It’s just gold everywhere.

Kelly Slater (USA) has hardly been seen this past week, but you can rest assured he’ll take to the water like he has been surfing his brains out. It’s in him. He has the fearless and stylish Dean Morrison (AUS), as well as Cronulla rookie Kirk Flintoff (AUS).

Flintoff is an interesting case, and one of those challenged to the core. Formerly a renowned aerial specialist, he qualified through last year’s WQS after a committed and exhaustive campaign around the globe. He is known for dexterity and amazing theatrics in small waves, but his test lies ahead in proving himself worthy in the big and challenging forums like Teahupoo.

California’s nifty and ultra-smooth stylist Rob Machado (USA) was a similar case at the beginning of his WCT career, clearly intimidated in waves over six foot. Knowing his fear, his Hawaiian mates Ross Williams and Shane Dorian dragged him out to the roving peaks of Oahu’s Sunset Beach in progressively bigger conditions, and eventually ‘The Mob’ rose to the challenge, climaxing in extraordinary performances, most notably at Pipeline against his mate Slater.

Since qualifying for the Foster’s Men’s Tour at Haleiwa last December like the driven competitor he is, Flintoff has been training rigorously, not just in physical cardio-vascular realms, but out in the thick and powerful reef breaks of the Cronulla region, taking on that personal nemesis of size at every opportunity. He will prove worthy.

It’s not just the rookies who are faced by the severest of challenges either. Heat 13 tomorrow is a great looking exchange, and there’s so much behind the characters involved. It features Neco Padaratz, fellow Brazilian Paulo Moura and the finally WCT-rated San Clemente freak talent of Chris Ward (USA).

Wardo began his long-waited WCT career on the Gold Coast this year with a huge six foot aerial rotation that he just missed landing. He finished runner-up in the event behind the man on the comeback Mick Fanning. He charged every section of every wave.

Ward duplicated his opening theatrics in the first event with another huge lofty boost on the first wave of his opening heat at Woolamai in the second event of the season. He is as bold as they come and will take some stopping here. He has only competed once before at Teahupoo, back when it was a WQS event, and acquitted himself well.

“Wardo charges on his backhand mate, don’t worry about that. He’s good!” declared world champion Andy Irons this afternoon.

“Yep, if he looses a heat, it won’t be because he didn’t have a go,” seconded 2000 world champion and fellow Hawaiian Sunny Garcia.

Whilst Ward will be out to win tomorrow, and as the event progresses, to capitalise on his stunning opening to the season, the Brasileiro duo of Padaratz and Moura will both be on individual missions of personal commitment. Both have interesting stories, both still developing.

Moura had a career personal best when he made the semi-finals at Pipeline last year. He sat, selected from deep and surfed well, calm and without hesitation, despite an intimidation factor – a human one, that he has been struggling under for some time. A while back he had a bit of an exaggerated run-in with a certain Hawaiian legend, and whether you’re in the right or wrong, when you cross an Hawaiian, accidentally or otherwise, you pay, at least in the short term. It’s just the way it is.

Moura has put in heaps of time in Hawaii, months on end, years on end, and stepping up to the plate there on the North Shore last year must help his cause. His quest though is not for personal vindication but simply meeting his own challenges. He relishes performance at every level, no matter what the size, but he particularly wants to succeed in the big stuff. Some think him arrogant, but they are wrong in their assumption. He is a strong but respectful character.

Waiting on a friend.

Moura has also put in lots of time here at Teahupoo as well, five extended seasons, typically arriving here this year over a week before the start of the event’s waiting period. With his prize money from Pipeline he went to Honolulu and bought a jet ski, stoked that he could finally engage in the flourishing tow-in realm. Unfortunately, taxes and shipping costs prohibited him from getting the machine to Tahiti this year.

He was out there in the big stuff here two weekends ago, and copped three 10-12’ sets on the head at one stage, getting retrieved from the impact zone by a jet ski, but that was as close to a mechanised hitch as he got.

“I really wanted to get a tow-in that day. The waves were so good, so big, so powerful, but nobody wanted to give me a start,” lamented Moura today.

“For many years I’ve been looking for the best wave of my life, and that day I saw guys sharing six or seven jet skis taking 20 each of the best waves of my life. I only wanted one. I wanted to go so bad! Now I am calm though, and I am here to better myself. I hope for a good contest, and I will keep trying,” said Moura.

It’s a pro surfing fact that the elder Brazilians are the cultural underdogs in this WCT world, but Moura could very well be the one to stand up and eventually kick the door down. It won’t be for lack of trying.

Then we have Percy ‘Neco’ Padaratz, younger brother of one half of Brazil’s elder dynamic duo Flavio Padaratz (the other half being Fabio Gouveia). Neco has a massive mission here. He is not here to take on his competitive peers, but Teahupoo itself. It’s personal, very personal. For all intensive purposes, he died here five years ago. Neco has not been the same since.

Surfing the 2000 event in chunderous 6-10’ waves, Teahupoo in terror mode, Neco wiped out heavily. After enduring the violent assailing whitewater, he found himself pinned to the reef, not by the force of the water, but literally wedged between several reef heads from the waist down. He could not release his legs.

The next wave released him, but his legrope remained a death chain. Waves passed over Neco as he went through different doors of fading consciousness. He swallowed water as he fought to scream. He couldn’t scream. He was trapped, and eventually he let go…let go of life, but then somehow, someway his head came up clear of the water.

“I was under the water for so long that I eventually relaxed and became resigned that it was God’s time to take me. Nobody was there to help me, there was nothing I could do. I thought my life was over,” said Neco, almost in a trance recalling the near catastrophe.

“I think it’s one of the best waves ever…I always have a desire to surf the wave good, because I like to, but…man! I almost lost my life in my first round heat trying to do my job. This is a very dangerous place, and a very dangerous job here,” said Neco.

“It’s a hard feeling to come back here for me. Every time I think about what happened, it seems just like yesterday. It’s going to take time, maybe forever. I have to deal with it…some how. It’s match of me and nature,” said Neco continuing to look out to sea.

Neco did not come back to Teahupoo for three years. He just could not. He said he would never come back to Teahupoo, but now he is back.

“I do what I have to do, and I go where I have to go, but I am not going to anything different than what I desire because I like my life. Life is more than a couple of waves, and how much a judge can assess what you do, or how the world looks at what you do for those couple of seconds,” continued Neco.

“The waves are going to pass by, you’re going to go home, all things are going to pass. It is me and nature,” concluded Neco before suddenly walking off dramatically. Drama is what this place specialises in. There you have just a couple of stories. Forty-three others could unfold in the next four days.

The next report for the event will be at 6.30am tomorrow, Saturday morning, with a 7.30am start anticipated.

The Billabong Pro Tahiti delivered by Air Tahiti Nui is proudly supported by Von Zipper, Bose, Kustom and The Tahitian Surfing Federation.

Billabong Pro Live Webcast: via www.billabongpro.com and www.aspworldtour.com each day of the event utilizing live coverage in English, French and Portuguese, with the event websites being translated into these three languages plus, Japanese and Spanish. Various camera angles, highlights and replays, weather and scoring information, direct viewer interaction, celebrity guests, interviews and more are a part of the daily webcast program.