Andy Goes Svengali

You probably think of me as an eternal presence in competitive surfing. Always on the podium. Never not winning. 

But truth be told, most of my competitive highlights were squeezed into a brief window during the ‘60s and ‘70s. Only enough to fill a couple of pages in the velvet-framed photo album that is my life.

There was my third place at the FNQ amateur titles in Bowen, in ‘67. The Saltwater Goon Bag, Taree ‘72. The Darlo Classic.

And, of course, I capped it all off with my ASS (Association of Surfing Specialists) world championship at Fukuoka in ‘73, when I stormed the field from the trials to take the crown on my experimental seven-finned surfboard. 

It was a meteoric rise, sure. An historic win. And yes, three-quarters of the competitive field that year had been detained in Japanese customs due to an anonymous drug tip off and missed the comp rego. I swear to this day I know nothin’ about it...

But believe it or not, when I won that title I almost gave away the whole game. Standing up there on that podium in Japan with my ASS in my hands, a sea of adoring faces looking back at me, being showered in sake and women, having achieved everything there was to achieve on a surfboard, I felt…empty. Listless. 

It’s a common experience for alphas at the top of their game. Ali. Jordan. Bert Newton. They all felt it. Alexander wept, ‘n all that. 

But I’ll tell you this for free: sharing metaphysical anguish doesn’t make it any easier to cop. 

I became dejected from the sport of surfing. Lost in the wilderness. Afterwards, in Fukushima, I buried my boards on a black sand beach and ran them over with a decommissioned Sherman tank. I gave my contest winnings to an elderly Japanese Yakuza with a jet black moustache and a wooden leg. 

I went AWOL. Spent a long winter fermenting yak milk in a Mongolian yurt. An even longer winter in Afghanistan trialling new strains of Hindu Kush with a CIA operative named Wyatt. And of course, there was the infamous year I spent fighting alongside the Shah of Iran in the revolution of ‘79. 

No need to go into details about that. There’s a tele-movie currently in production with Channel 9.

But the time I spent afterwards in an Islamic prison taught me two things: there’s no substitute for locally-kneaded Persian flatbread; and my heart still lay in the ocean.

I returned to the Gold Coast in the summer of ‘81 with chronic dysentery and a renewed sense of purpose. But where to squirt it? 

As luck would have it, a snow-haired grom from my hometown of Burleigh named Kingston Lunch had recently cracked the newly formed championship tour, but was having trouble finding a win. Kingston was keen on the experimental equipment, just like me, and there was a debate over whether it was helping or hurting his generous endowment of god-given talent. 

Word on the street was the diminutive Queenslander was feeling adrift himself. Not quite burying-his-boards-on-a-Japanese-beach adrift, but close. I could see some of myself in Kingston. Could he be my new project..? 

I was down in Palmy for my weekly colonic when I ran into Kingston having breakfast at the local Hare Krishna with his ballerina girlfriend. 

I took it straight to him. “Hear you need some help with your surfing?”

“Yeah…” he replied sheepishly, looking down to his lentil curry. 

“Let me train you. But we do it my way. And there’ll be none of this bloody wog food.”

I pushed the curry to the side of the table, along with his leotarded girl. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. 

“Yeah…Orrite.”

I settled in next to Kingston. Gave the girlfriend a knowing wink. Centered my attention on him.

“Tell me about your family. Your upbringing.”

“Well… I grew up on a sugar cane farm in the Burleigh hills. Just me and my brother and my Dad. Dad would train us like crazy but my older brother was always the favourite. He was training him for the Coolangatta Gold.” 

“What sorta regime does he have you on?”

“Running up and down hills, mostly. Cutting cane. Hauling bananas. Licking cane toads.” 

I surveyed him. It sounded like his dad had him on the right track. I’d been ‘toading’ since the early ‘50s and it had made a winner out of me. 

Physically he was in peak condition. The problem was between the ears. I may have been there for a colonic that day, but I could see I wasn't the only one who needed the shit blasted out of me. 

I’ll tell you one thing for free. Athletes today are too pampered. Meditation. Calisthenics. Icebaths. Positive mindsets. It all breeds weakness. And don't start me on these so-called modern day surf coaches. They sit there with their leather-bound notebooks and gentle pats on the bum. And for what? 

A soft word of consolation when their understudy goes arse up, yet again. 

They’re all carrot, no stick. The modern day elite pro is no more than an errant child. They need rules. Discipline. One must admonish their mistakes. Rub their nose in their shit and make sure they don’t do it again. 

Being a svengali’s no easy thing. It’s like being a dictator, or a Shah. It means giving up any pretenses of empathy or human decency. Ya gotta have one goal for your student: total domination. And ya gotta reach that goal by any means necessary. I wasn't the first coach in the history of competitive surfing.  But I would be the most ferocious. 

To mold, first you must break. This was the approach I was going to take with Kingston. 

All this flashed through my mind while sitting there that day at Krishna’s Kitchen.

“Meet me at Tallebudgera creek, 4am next Monday,” I said. “Pack enough clothes for 30 days. And bring some toads.”

I called in my CIA buddy Wyatt from Afghanistan. As well as synthesizing different types of weed to ship back to the college campuses in the States, Wyatt was a master in what they called in those days advanced interrogation. 

Tools of the trade he’d been working on with the local Mujahideen against the Russians, designed to break the will of even the hardest of commies. Perfect for my needs.

At 4am on a stormy Burleigh morning we took Kingston to my secret training camp buried deep in the Gold Coast hinterland. 

By day we’d subject him to your stock standard torture techniques. Water boarding. Bashing. Playing a tape of Iranian funk music I'd picked up during the Revolution on loop. You know, standard shit. 

But by night we’d get psychological. High on toad juice, we'd bombard him with constant insults while depriving him of sleep in a fluorescent lit room. You don't want it enough. You're an embarrassment. Your girlfriend is a 6, at best. 

I also introduced him to my seven-finned designs. A revolutionary configuration that unlocked previously inaccessible hydrodynamic dimensions - as well as providing great storage capacity while travelling. It was perfect for the stocky build and low center of gravity. I shaped him a full quiver and had him surf them exclusively in 1 foot Bribie Island slop (to this day I claim there is no truer testing ground).

I can tell you this for free. The Kingston that the world knew, the knockabout boy with the alabaster hair and gentle nature, died in that camp. The man that came down from the hill was a beast. I tell you he was a monster. With laser focus. Unlimited drive. A force of nature. Every inch of hair shaved from his body to offset the drag from those seven-finners.

Of course history tells us the rest of the story. Kingston bowed out in the first round of every comp that year before using one my boards to attack the head judge at the ‘82 Mattara. Medically retired at 24. Institutionalised a year after that. 

But I still maintain I made him a better human. A stronger man. 

It also gave me time to recover from my dysentery, at which point I was able to:

•  claim his retirement wildcard to mount my own comeback in the tour of ‘83.
• win $450,000 for a third place at the Brunei Pro.
• meet up with his ex, the ballerina, in a Parisian loveshack where we explored new frontiers in the realm of sexual dexterity (as seen in the sealed section of that velvet-framed photo album). 

Swings and roundabouts, as they say.

// ANDY MERIDIAN