| 30 years ago is a long time to remember smaller details, especially when you might not have been sure which details were large and which were small at the time. What I remember is that 5 waves were scored, but it might have been best 3 rides. The final took place late in the day, with either a dropping or low tide. Following is an excerpt of the account Drew Kampion wrote for International Surfing Magazine. " Then the five entered the water and rode what there was to ride, and David was the only one of them to gain speed over white water, the only one to surf across the dead spots like a skater. Everyone surfed well, but David surfed the best while Jim Blears got the good waves towards the end of the heat when judges tend to score higher. Although the judging was not consistently good, or consistently poor, it amazes me how much concentration they have. One judge even listened to football games on his transistor [radio -Ed] while judging and never flinched. What can one expect from human beings anyway? Blears came first, David second, Townend third, Bertleman fourth, and 15 year old crowd favorite Michael Ho, was fifth." Kampion was right on the money with his accurate description of Nuuhiwa. My clearest memory of a surfer during the contest final is of Nuuhiwa doing exactly what Kampion described: gaining speed over white water like a skater. It would be good to point out at this juncture, at least for historical reference, that "like a skater" in 1972 meant a speed skater, not a skateboarder. It manifested as a form of rail-to-rail pumping or transition and was an early example of what contemporary surfing today looks like. Remember, the Fish was perhaps the most efective twin fin surfboard design, and Simon Anderson was on the Aussie team and presumably on the beach watching, as was Reno Abellira and Mark Richards, and right there you have the future lineage of the thruster. I also remember the other contestants: Townend as being smooth, the other Hawaiians being young and blasting manuevers (and probably not making long rides as a result). And I remember Jim Blears making long rides on the better waves, and riding more waves than Nuuhiwa. After the surf magazines came out with their articles on the 1972 World Contest, contest surfing pretty much died in California. The whole state went underground, and the key influence in the surfing world became the North Shore of Oahu. Hawaii undeniably had the talent and proving grounds, although in retrospect the attempts to ride Hawaiian style equipment in other wave types without massive adaptation was not the best idea. That's how progress comes, however. With Californians out of the picture and contests in the media center of surfing (California) being non-existant, and the World Contest itself having been declared irrelevant, the whole scene was swept clean. A few years later Aussie teammates Cairns and Townend pretty much dreamed up a world tour with a year-end champion to address the criticism of the one contest/one champ model, and tossed in money to boot. Lost in all this, however, was the 1972 World Champion: Jim Blears of Hawaii. I don't think a surf magazine even published a photo of him with the trophy, such was the tenor of the times. Here's what Blears did during that contest: he rode a radical new surfboard design with little practice, in sloppy California beachbreak, on a low-tide afternoon, against legendary David Nuuhiwa and a very similar surfboard design, against soon-to-be legend Larry Bertlemann, against eventual World Champions Michael Ho and Peter Townend, in a style and manner which fits in a direct developmental lineage to the best of today's contemporary surfing, in front of a huge audience which included many of the men behind the design evolution of the 80's and 90's. He caught the best waves of the heat, and he caught the required number, and he rode them quite well. Nuuhiwa probably had the two best rides of the final, but as I recall he didn't catch the required number of waves, which kept his score down. Jim Blears was the correct winner of the contest by the judging criteria. The whole notion that Nuuhiwa should have been World Champion because he "surfed the best" was irrelevant then, and is even more so in light of the last 20 years of pro surfing. If it was "2 best scoring waves" then Nuuhiwa should have taken it, but it wasn't. There was one set of criteria for all surfers in the final, and Blears performed. Blears faded from the scene, and the last I read about him he was an Oahu lifeguard. Once you are the World Champ, where do you go? Especially when you are the Last World Champion, which certainly was the case for his era. Absolutely nothing was on the horizon, and there was nothing left to prove on the surfing planet he was currently inhabiting. Jim Blears: 1972 World Surfing Champion |
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| JIM BLEARS: 1972 WORLD CHAMP |
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