Steve Shearer April 07, 2009

Round two has been completed in this simmering epic that is starting to make War and Peace look like your average surfing blog. Talk about being bogged down in the trenches. If they didn't run today I was ready for the phone call to Al-Qa'ida to ask, no beg, if they could just please nuke Victoria and put us all out of misery. I joke, of course, no-one would be prepared to waste perfectly good enriched uranium on this joint.

The psychological drama was ratcheted up a notch today with news coming to hand that it was the surfers who had stymied moves for an earlier move to Phillip Island, based on the fact that they had paid for their accommodation and didn't want to move. I tried to confirm this but first Bobby Martinez, then Chris Davidson and Dane Reynolds all professed an ignorance of the situation.

So I moved down the beach to where the Brazilian Total Coverage guys from some TV channel were set-up. They are standing there conducting interviews with Brazilian surfers; marvellous passionate hand waving interviews in Portuguese. Of course I cannot understand a word but I drifted closer just to warm in the glow of all this passion and....joi de vivre. It was oddly comforting. I decided I had better speak, by this stage I was practically leaning all over the camera guy, who seemed completely unfazed.

I spoke to what was obviously the director, if that is the right word. He had a child's school book in hand, thickly lined and a cheap pen and he was scribbling furiously. He was the kind of small wizened man that appears ageless, dressed like a gentleman attending a polo function in neutral shades of brown.

I asked him if he thought Brazilian surfers were being treated fairly by the ASP or if he thought there were inherent biases in the system. The man, we might as well say his name: Edinho Leite cleared his throat and launched into the most wonderful, passionate and diplomatic soliloquy. I was too busy listening to write notes, the man had the kind of cigarette modulated pharynx that sounds like a harmonica with a much lower register. A kind of deep ululation that renders one into a trance. The summary of what he said was that Brazilians are passionate about their surfing (oh, for the time when the Brazilian Dane Reynolds is born; none of this Dora-esque sticking it to the man, just pure one hundred per cent passion), and that they like to surf in a way that the ASP does not appreciate. It was just a question of taste. Pure Diplomacy and that Voice. It was like being covered in a cigarette flavoured chocolate.

Then he turned to me, and lowered the Voice. The frequency by now was so low the information was sensed via the inner bone marrow. He leaned in and said "Do you eat kangaroo?"

Touche Mr Edinho Leite.

Just to confirm this general attitude of Brazilian diplomacy I asked the notoriously hard-line Neco Padaratz if he thought the Brazilian Man was being discriminated against by the ASP. It's a legitimate question. This kind of thing has been simmering away for years. Neco visibly recoiled and said "whoa, political....hard question brah"

Then he calmly and diplomatically said exactly what Ed had told me - it's a question of style and taste. The Brazilian Man is in the process of modifying his surfing to suit the ASP criteria. Then he patted me on the back and thanked me profusely for asking him the question.

I moved up the beach to watch Dane's heat with Blake Thornton. The atmosphere, a short walk from the judging stands, was close to nil. A small boy, Dane's caddy, was sitting on the beach with Dane's back-up board, which was a roundtailed 'Rookie' model. Six-foot one-inch long, with a hard edge extending up past the fins and, according to Dane's caddy 'a nice wax job'. Dane's caddy is called Fergus Willett, a name not even John Fante could conjure up, and he sat there with his brother Larry receiving instruction about the proper way of dealing with a loss. Vitally important stuff.

Fergus is nine and Larry is twelve. They are not watching the surfing.

Larry says "If he loses don't be..... too happy and stuff." To which Fergus replies after, a great deal of thought "No, but I need to say well done and stuff." Inevitably, it seems to Larry, Dane is losing and this arcane piece of etiquette will be soon put into practice. I mean, where do you learn this stuff? How do you earn your chops in the caddy board handover after a loss?

Fergus, poor sensitive chap, is kind of sweating now, looking down disconsolately and mouthing the words "well done Dane" He suddenly says "I don't want to be a Pro Surfer" "But why?" I ask. "Um, all the pressure probably, I dunno", and he looks back down at the sand.

He's really feeling it this kid. Luckily old Larry, a dab hand at this caper after caddying for Bede, has the caddy moxy going full force and he keeps his brother from thinking about the coming moment: when he passes the board to Dane and says "well done Dane" and Dane looks down with weary but grateful eyes to the kid and says "thanks Buddy". And poor young Fergus Willet goes home troubled as all hell about this looming avalanche of pressure the Pros have to live under.

We all thought Dane had lost, Me, Larry and Fergus. Well we couldn't hear the scores and Dane pretty much fell on everything. Fergus was taking it hard. He wandered down to Dane with the back-up board .....he must've been thinking "don't be too happy"....and all that awful, awful pressure. Almost too much to bear. He handed the board over. I could see him mouth the words "well done Dane" and I was sure a single lone tear rolled down his cheek, but that might've been just the general funereal ambience of the handover.

What with the Brazilian diplomacy and passion and the sensitive nature of the Victorian board caddies I had to go lie down and absorb the whole thing.

We came back later and the surf had picked right up. Drew Courtney was sticking it to Mick Campbell and the golden sunlight was slipping down beneath a grey mantle of cloud. Fergus was there somewhere, grown up beyond his years and contemplating the hard road of the Professional Surfer.

The Outsider - Day Seven

The Outsider - Day Six......The Outsider - Day Five

The Outsider - Day Four....The Outsider - Day Three

The Outsider - Day Two.....The Outsider - Day One