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| JIM BLEARS 1972 WORLD CHAMPION PAGE TWO |
| A quick glance at some of the names on the Australian and Hawaiian teams in the contest program shows a roster of surfers who were or did become legend: Mark Richards, Peter Townend, Simon Anderson, Michael Petersen, Terry Fitzgerald, Ian Carins, Lopez, Hakman, Downing, Bertlemann, Ho, Aipa, and Abellira. The California/East Coast/USA team roster wasn't in the program as it was just set in the final days. Corky Carroll was on the team, and Jeff Crawford from Florida, and others, but the flat-out star of the USA team was David Nuuhiwa. Such was the state of affairs in California at that time that reading an account of the contest 30 years later would make you wonder if there was any real team at all. California surfing was coming apart at the seams and the American surf media was reflecting that in the reporting, not perhaps so much as an account of it but in flavor. This California bias, or maybe self-absorbtion is a better term, would alienate the East Coast USA surfers to this day. I mentioned that a moster south swell appeared during this contest, and this is true. The problem was that it didn't appear in San Diego, so the contest didn't really get a lick of swell. The key part of it was held on a Saturday and Sunday in 2-3 foot surf. As a precursor to the next 8 years locals stole Nuuhiwa's favorite board, a fish design, and hung it's broken self from the Ocean Beach pier in plain view of the contest crowd with the message "Good Luck Dave" painted on it. This was a retaliation for his supposed stealing (or using) of the fish design. Ah, the Fish. A true San Diego innovation, it had appeared at just about the same time as the '72 World Contest. In fact, since the magazines were only published every other month back then, the World Contest coverage provided the first real mass examination of this surfboard design. It was still cutting edge experimental as far as the surfing world at large went. Drew Kampion was still the undisputed king of American surf-journos, although he had moved shop to International Surfing magazine by that time. Because his voice was the defining one for that era, what he wrote carried enormous weight. Drew was not happy with what he saw. The cream of Hawaiian big wave surfers were forced to surf mush; the best and brightest stars of California were performing not in point surf but in uninspired beach break. The mental climate of the surfing culture at that time in California felt that the best surfer in the world couldn't be properly chosen if he wasn't in the best surf, or even good surf. How valid could the results be? Kampion championed this in print. For the finals five men hit the water. Or some men and some boys hit the water. Townend couldn't have been more than 17 or 18 years old, and Bertlemann and Ho were younger than that. Blears and Nuuhiwa were the old men of this group...and the only two riding Fish. Blears had picked up a Fresh Fish surfboard, by John Holly if memory serves, and had ridden it only twice before the final day. Nuuhiwa was on a backup fish of his own. As the final went on, perhaps an hour in length, the present and future of surfing were on display. I recall Townend as being smooth and polished, reflecting the point waves of his home. Ho and Bertlemann were very manuever oriented, riding either Aipa or Downing boards at that time, and about a year away from knocking over the California-inspired style and flow school of performance surfing. Blears and Nuuhiwa rode real, honest-to-God fish boards - in 2002 they are called Traditional Fish - and were the blended class of the final. This design allowed them to both utilize the wave, get distance, and surf with something of the traditional style. Think the best of contemporary surfing but without the thruster-dictated mandatory pumping which has all but destroyed the ability to flow with a wave in anything under 6 foot surf. The fact that Blears did it on a board he had hardly ridden only adds to the credibility of his solid performance. Ah, yes...his solid performance. |
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