January 1973; I'm thirteen years old, standing on the beach soaking wet, shivering, and overcome with a strange but euphoric new feeling. I've ridden my first waves and a lifelong passion for surfing and the ocean begins. By the time I'm fifteen, I'm a hopelessly addicted and impressionable surf rat watching the world's top surfers closely for inspiration and technique.

One of the most innovative and influential surfers of the period was a young South African named Shaun Tomson, who's technical skill and courage in big Hawaiian surf was matched only by his model representation of the sport and athletes. Shaun served as surfing's chosen public envoy with the natural magnetism, eloquence, ocean aptitude, and elite athleticism to make people outside the sport take notice. Originality of form and function is genius, and he had it in spades. His groundbreaking mid-70's performances in powerful Hawaiian conditions remain just as cutting edge and valid today, and surfing continues to benefit from the shining example he's set in and out of the water over the last three and a half decades. Many older surfers continue to follow Shaun's archetype of surfing as a start-to-finish lifestyle and a metaphorical guide for life in general. I recently had the opportunity to speak with him at length about his early days in Durban, Hawaii and Hawaiians, surfing and surfers, and the joy of riding waves into one's 50's and beyond;


DL: So when did you begin surfing and when did the competitive bug first bite?
ST: I started surfing in 1965, and my first contest was in 1966, where I came in third; there were only three of us in it though (big laugh)!!! It was a just a local club contest, but really I enjoyed it and kept at it. Sports and competition were a very big part of my family; my father being a champion swimmer, and at school I was a really good swimmer and racquet, cricket, and tennis player. The surfing thing just evolved along with all else.

DL: Early on, the Gunston 500 was South Africa's most prestigious surfing event. When did it start?
ST: My Dad started the Gunston actually, along with two other partners, so he started the first pro contest, and even today it's the longest running pro contest in the world. So he started it in 1969 and then I won it six times in a row from 1973, which is still a surfing record. Not even Kelly (Slater) himself has won a contest six times in row (laughs)!

DL: Even now, many surfers won't allow for an association between the act of surfing and competition, saying that it should be done simply for its own spiritual and cultural sake. How would you respond to that?
ST: That's the essence of surfing and that's why we all surf. Out of all the sports in the world, there's only a few of them in which competition is not integral to that pursuit. As surfers we're really lucky, in that even if we're good enough to become pros, once we retire we continue to surf and we continue to get that enrichment and that amazing sensation even though our careers are long passed. I retired in 1989 and I get as much enjoyment out of surfing now as I did when I was the number one guy in the world. Most surfers just have the spiritual experience. The guys lucky enough to be pros also have the professional experience, and it makes the entire experience ... better. I think you can do them both, and neither affects the other negatively, only positively.


DL: I think for any athlete there's just a natural competitiveness and this is especially true for surfers.
ST: Yeah, that's part of everyone's personality. Human beings are competitive, and there is a tremendous competition in the lineup just to get a wave. People say that surfing is this spiritual, existentialist pursuit, but surfing is one of the most competitive sports in the world just at a recreational level because you're competing with other people just to catch that wave and it's very seldom that you're surfing by yourself. The duality ...  there's that dichotomy there in surfing, but I think that's part of its allure.

DL: In some circles, competitive surfers are frowned upon. They're perceived as immodest, show offs.
ST: It's not that way at all. Today when I surf ...  I love to compete against my own internal standards and I think most surfers do as well. They always try to improve. So there's a sort of competition amongst ourselves to better ourselves. It's just part of everyone's life, part of human nature that there's just this constant striving for improvement ...  in all of us.


DL: In the film Bustin' Down The Door, you mentioned some upsetting accusations aimed at your family in early South African competitions, and the importance of breaking out into the international pro scene to prove yourself once and for all. How did your success abroad change attitudes towards the Tomson family and competition in South Africa in years following?
ST: South Africa was under the Apartheid regime back then. Very few (South African) sportsmen could travel internationally, specifically amateur sportsmen or official national teams who were not allowed to travel internationally because they were perceived as representative of the Apartheid regime. I was a professional and I always considered myself, even though I was South African, a citizen of the world and in no way, shape, or form did I represent the Apartheid regime. So when I traveled and had international success, it was a big deal in South Africa because I was one of the few sportsmen who was in the public eye that was succeeding internationally, and it brought a lot of respect to surfing.. During that period in the 70's, when surfing was certainly maligned all over the world as something that teenagers did, something that druggies did, in South Africa it was considered a legitimate pro sport before anywhere else in the world, even before Australia. My early success had a lot to do with it and also my father was a great believer in the honor of sport and he gave me that upbringing that I always had to honor my sport. I do a lot of inspirational speaking around the country now, for all sorts of groups, and (during the presentation) I have a picture I flash up on screen of Duke Kahanamoku, honoring The Sport of Kings. He was an idol of mine when I was a young boy and my father's too because he was a swimming champion. He actually met the Kahanamoku's when he was recuperating from his shark attack (NOTE: In 1947, Shaun's father Ernie was attacked and severely injured by a shark while training in the ocean off Durban, South Africa). He'd had surgery in San Francisco, and came over to recuperate. He stayed at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and met all the Kahanamoku's there. Duke was a very powerful presence and his whole concept of honor, and Aloha, and his creed was a very big part of our household growing up halfway around the world in South Africa, you know what I mean (laughs)?!

DL: I assume the accusations were made anonymously?
ST: Yeah, it was during this one competition, the first Gunston 500 that I'd had. It was particularly insulting to my Dad, and myself too, because we were very honorable people. To have this accusation, was particularly ...  cutting ...  because it was so far away from the truth. So it made me even more determined to succeed internationally, and it might have been good in a way because it motivated me. My Dad was a very firm believer in honor and he was just an honorable man. He just thought your handshake was everything.

DL: So did the accusers acknowledge they were wrong or apologize?
ST: Certainly, yeah they did acknowledge that they'd made a mistake. But I used that negative instance to really motivate me, and I think it helped me in my career. Also, I think that no matter how successful you are ... , you could be the nicest person in the world, and that's what I always try to be ... , there's always going to be someone who'll try to kick you. No matter what you do, not everyone's going to like you or what you do, and that's just life. 99% of people will enjoy your success and there will always be a certain segment that won't.


DL: You recognized at an early age that Oahu's North Shore was the place where surfers had to excel to become complete surfers. How did you come to this realization, and with all the other challenging surf zones discovered around the world over the years, do you still believe this?
ST: It was really in three ways; through the surfing magazines, surfing movies, and by the few (South African) surfers that had traveled there. Hawaii just had that mystique, and ...  you know ...  it hasn't changed. This was in the 1960's, its forty years later and nothing has changed. You can speak to any top surfer in the world and they will say that success in Hawaii is the most important success for a surfer.

DL: Was there a particular moment, season, or even a singular wave where you acknowledged within that you'd surfed well in Hawaii, and you were this so-called complete surfer?
ST: It took me a long time. I mean I went to Hawaii for many years and I took punishing wipeouts. It took me a few years to gain the confidence, and it really was in 1975 that I realized that I had achieved my objective of being able to surf every single break. It wasn't just surfing well at Pipeline or Sunset, you had to surf all the breaks properly; from Haleiwa, to Laniakea, to Pipeline, to Waimea, Backdoor, Off The Wall, all the key breaks along that seven mile stretch.

DL: I think all us old timers in Hawaii still consider Sunset Beach to be the final litmus test for North Shore surfing.
ST: Sunset is still the ultimate test of a big wave rider's skill, no doubt.

DL: Sunset's kind of fallen out of favor with the surf media hasn't it?
ST: It has completely fallen off! It doesn't have the notoriety that it once had. Pipeline is about the drop and the tube, Waimea is about the drop. Sunset is the complete package. The hardest big wave in the world to ride is Sunset, without a doubt, and it shows how great you are or how bad you are in performance surfing. Waimea was never about performance, just the drop. Pipeline to a certain extent had a performance component, but Sunset is the true test of a big wave rider. Sunset shows a person whether they can carve (in big waves) or not and carving is the true test of a surfer, I've always felt that. It's a great wave!


DL: Before that fateful chat you had with Rabbit Bartholomew on the beach at Pipeline about your futures, how long had you guys been coming to Hawaii, and what funneled everything down into this one historic conversation?
ST: Well I'd been coming to Hawaii since 1969. It was a bar mitzvah present from my Dad.  Then I'd come every year just to experience it and often you'd get an invitation to like the Smirnoff (contest). So I'd been coming to Hawaii for a number of years prior to Rabbit and I having that conversation in 1975. It was a year of change, we'd both had success and we were starting to get all this notoriety in the media. Our surfing really made an impact on the North Shore that year. So we felt it was right there in front of us and I think Rabbit could see it more clearly than me. Surfing was just something I just did because I loved it and I didn't actually think there was a career potential there. After the conversation I had with him, he really got me thinking that “Wow man, Rabbit really believes in this,” and he sort of caught me up in his enthusiasm and ultimately I made it my career and made it all happen.


DL: The first serious discussions and movement on an organized worldwide pro circuit began in Hawaii. Aside from you surfers, who were major cogs in the creation of professional surfing and a formal circuit?
ST: Who really brought it all together were Fred Hemmings and Randy Rarick. Those guys had a massive influence on professional surfing. Fred especially, had this vision of surfing being a professional sport and that it needed to have this international flavor. He had the vision to see that we could create this circuit, similar to golf and racing, and we all were equally as passionate as he was. He was a real visionary, Fred.

DL: There were some heavy vibes between local Hawaiians and you and your peers. These incidents were presented in Bustin' Down The Door in a very open, blow-by-blow manner. I think most in the Hawaii's surfing community are appreciative that the film represented their justifications for that whole situation. Your interviews with Eddie Rothman were great!
ST: It was classic (laughs)! I think Eddie over the years has gotten a lot of respect from me, and he knew that I wasn't going to ambush anyone. When you're making a movie, it's very easy to make someone look bad. That was never my intent with the movie, and we wanted to portray people as they are. I think there's not one person in that movie that can say, “Listen, Shaun ambushed me, I wasn't portrayed as I am.”  We tried to portray everyone accurately and we tried to portray them in a way so that viewers know them better after they've seen that movie. Eddie was kind enough to say yes, and you know Eddie's a clever guy. This happened 30 years ago. People have never really told the true story about it, and it's a very interesting story. It happened, you know, and some people were villains, some people weren't villains. Maybe sometimes we should have kept our mouths shut, maybe sometimes we didn't.

DL: It was almost a situation where neither side was right, and neither side was wrong. I mean, everyone played both parts in it right?
ST: There's a whole gray area there about what happened and we wanted to get everyone's sides out there so people could see it wasn't a black and white situation. It wasn't that the Australians were bad, or that the Hawaiians were bad. It's a whole gray area, just like life is you know? People are not wholeheartedly good, and not wholeheartedly bad ...  all a shade of gray, but that's what's interesting.


DL: To an extent, I liked the brashness and gamesmanship of the Australians back then. It was a bit over the top in the beginning, but I understood it, and I sense that Ian Cairns stills clings to it a bit ...  to this day.
ST: You can see it! Let me tell you ...   what happened back then is still ...  there's a couple of guys who are still sensitive about it, you know? Ian, when he talks about it, gets very, very passionate about it. I think with some people, they're not as willing to let go of what happened. I mean, (laughing) it's been THIRTY YEARS!!!

DL: Your generation's commitment set the groundwork for the global juggernaut that's the ASP pro tour today. Pro surfers are doing amazing things in and out of contests. How would you stack them up against other professional athletes for overall fitness, athleticism, and general appeal?
ST: In terms of athleticism, a number of years ago when we were competing in Australia, one of its top universities came down and did a strict physical test on us surfers and found that the top 16 pros had the physical equivalency level of Olympic middle distance runners. Now for anyone that's run track, there is no race harder to run than the 800 meters. Plus, unlike any other athletes in any other big sports, surfers will risk their lives. They finished a competition recently at Teahupo'o (Tahiti). You take a bad wipeout at Teahupo'o, you can die. You take a bad wipeout at Pipeline, you can die. So the athleticism and the courage displayed by surfers I think are greater than basketball players, baseball players, and it's up there and maybe even greater than football players.

DL: Many people who don't surf, view surfing as trivial, an adolescent phase, more hobby than sport. I don't think people realize that surfers are very much legitimate athletes, and just how physically skilled and fit they really are!
ST: Definitely! ...  Kelly Slater is the greatest sportsman alive in the world today ...  NINE world championships. He's better than Lance Armstrong, he's better than Pele, better than Kobe Bryant, better than (Roger) Federer, better than (Rafael) Nadal, better than Tiger (Woods). I mean, to me, he's the most complete athlete in the world today, plus he's really intelligent, and he's very articulate. It's just that surfing doesn't have the notoriety or the mainstream appeal.


DL: I'm just as enthusiastic today about surfing as when I started. It's a link to my youth and a light into the future. I've watched you and your generation closely to see how you've all managed to stay connected to the surfing lifestyle.  
ST: I think the last five minutes of Bustin' Down The Door really capture the message we wanted to get across to people; about how much we love surfing, how much we loved surfing then, how much we still love surfing now, and how it's still a big part of our lives. We're not like a football player who just becomes a participant. We are just as stoked now as we were then. Whenever the surf is good ...  I surf. I'm still experimenting with wacky new surfboards (designs). Like you said, surfing keeps you young ...  maybe not young in terms of numbers, but in terms of attitude definitely.

DL: Over the years, you been quoted in the media with such memorable lines as “Surfers are beautiful people”, “Surfers must give back to the sport”, “Time is expanded in the tube,” and in the closing scene of Bustin' Down The Door, “Surfing makes my life better.”  Is there a common thread between them all?  
ST: I just meant that surfing transforms your life ...  or can transform your life. For me, I lost my son three years ago in a tragic accident, and surfing got me through that tough period in my life. It can be so many things, surfing. I am very proud of surfing, and I'm very very proud to be a surfer.

After retiring as a full time pro, Tomson went on to expand his personal resume to include business owner, Hollywood actor, media commentator, book author, environmental advocate, and inspirational speaker. It's not at all surprising that these pursuits are mostly based around surfing, but then, there are few more deserving or skilled enough to carry off a productive career beyond the competitive arena than him.


Riding waves and other ocean related activities have given me and other ordinary surfers unforgettable moments of exhilaration, fitness, identity, solace, escape, and a zeal for life. It's great to know that ahead of the celebrity, past all the accolades, underneath all the contest victories, the magazine photos, movie cameos, and opportunity that surfing has provided Shaun Tomson, he remains at 53 years young, just a stoked surfer like the rest of us.

Surfer's Code link: http://www.surferscode.com/
Premiere Speakers link: http://premierespeakers.com/shaun_tomson/video/11571

Come see and meet surfing's living legends at the 2009 Duke's Legends Surf Classic in Waikiki, August 28 & 29, 2009!

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