Call it fate, bad management, or simple
bad luck., these nine surfers have all had their fair share of it. From
lightening strikes to bone cancer, fist fights to narrowly missed
glory, shattered dreams to actual death, here are nine surfers who
haven’t always had lady luck on their side.
The Broken Back – Glenn Hall
Photo: Shutterstock.com
31-year-old Glenn “Micro” Hall, an Australian surfer with Irish
heritage had come staggeringly close to qualifying for the elite World
Championship Tour on numerous occasions over a ten year period.
However a combination of injury issues – a cruciate knee injury and
multiple ankle problems, and sheer bad luck – twice he finished within
one heat of qualifying, thwarted him for most of his 20s.
“It was goal I had been trying to reach for roughly a decade,” Hall said on his blog afterwards. “A decade of my wife and family giving up things in her life to support my dream.”
However in a cruel twist, after finally achieving his dream and
making the grade in 2013, more rotten look struck when in he broke his
back surfing in a competition in Fiji, and couldn’t surf for the rest of
the year.
To add insult to injury, the suits at the ASP then decided not to
give Hall the injury wild card spot for 2014. Of course Hall, one of the
most achingly positive humans on earth, doesn’t consider him unlucky
and fought back to be in this year’s top 32 on the WCT.
The Lightning Strike – Pierre Tostee
Photo Montage: Mpora.com
They say lightening never strikes twice, although for former
professional surfer Pierre Tostee, it took two disastrous and cruel
pieces of luck to end his professional career.
In Newcastle, Australia, in 1987, Tostee earned the distinction of
being the only surfer ever to be struck by lightning during a world pro
tour competition. Tostee was waiting on the rocks to paddle out for his
heat when lightening struck. After a brief hospital stay, Tostee
recovered sufficiently to surf in the competition the next day.
However, just one year later the clean living Christian accidentally
ate some of fellow pro surfer Nicky Woods’ space cakes and went into a
drug-induced psychosis and that required an extend stay in hospital.
The episode effectively ended his pro surfing career, although he’s now a successful ASP surf photographer.
The Perenial Loser – Ricky Basnett
Photo: theinertia.com
The South African surfer has the unfortunate record of being the
first professional to go through a whole year on the elite WCT without
winning a heat. Back in 2008, the man known as Ricky Bobby (also kind of
unfortunate), lost every heat he surfed, 22 in total, to come a distant
last on the world tour rankings.
Last year the feat was repeated however with both Raoni Monteiro and
Alana Blanchard also failing to register a single heat win. Basnett
though has always been good humoured about his Annus horribilis.
“I’m bummed to be sharing the record, as I worked really hard for it!” Ricky told Surfline last year.
The Big Wave Fatality – Mark Foo
Photo: fluir.terra.com.br
There is perhaps no more unlucky turn of events than losing your
life, and that cruelest of twist of fate occurred to Hawaiian surfer
Mark Foo. The famous big wave surfer had traveled to surf Mavericks,
California for the very first time and after a series of cruel
circumstances the wave ended up taking his life.
First the wave while big, wasn’t anywhere near the size of some of
the waves that Foo had caught in his illustrious career. The wipeout
too, caught by photographers from two angles, was also shown to be
fairly innocuous.
Most experts seemed to think Foo’s leash become entangled on the
rocks, a rare occurrence, and a second wave prevented him from taking
the leash off and getting to the surface.
Another surfer Mike Parsons, who rode that second wave, actually
bumped into Foo underwater, but could do nothing to help, himself being
rolled by the massive wave. All-in-all it was a series of freak
accidents that ended the life of one surfing’s most experienced big wave
riders.
The Nearly Man – Gary “Kong” Elkerton
Photo: Dan Merkel / surfermag.com
Gary “Kong” Elkerton was one of the world’s best and most powerful
surfers throughout the ’80s and ’90s. His successful and influential
career was only tarnished by the fact he never achieved his ultimate
goal of winning a world title.
Such was his determination to win, he dropped his famous nickname
“Kong” and banned anyone from using it, as he feared it was affecting
his reputation for professionalism.
He eventually finished runner-up three times, in 1987, 1990 and 1993,
although he lost every single one after incredibly close calls and
controversial interferences in the final decisive heats.
In Hawaii, during the 1990 decider at Pipeline, for example, two
Hawaiians allegedly effectively took Elkerton out, increasing the
chances of their fellow Hawaiian Derek Ho winning the event.
In 1987 Elkerton lost a single heat by a few points that would have
given him the title he so craved. In the end, such was his unfortunate
luck he had to settle for the tag as “best surfer never to have won the
world title”.
The Assault And Battery – Larry Blair
Photo: indosurflife.com
Larry Blair, was a surfer from Maroubra, Australia, who had an
incredible competitive run in the late ’70s. He won back-to-back
Pipeline Masters in ’78 and ’79 – the first non-Hawaiian to do so. He
also pocketed Sydney’s prestigious Coke Contest in 1978, which at the
time the most lucrative event in professional surfing.
However the actor trained surfer, who was famously called “the
hottest kook in the world”, luck ran out when he arrived in the North
Shore to try to score a hat trick of Pipe Masters titles in 1980.
Some local Hawaiians were unimpressed with both Blair’s acting
credentials and his confidence at Pipe, and assaulted him on the beach,
punching him in the head and stamping on all his boards. It was perhaps
no surprise that he was eliminated early from the event and never again
won a major surfing competition.
The Trier (With An Unfortunare Surname) – Wayne “Shiva” Glasscock
Photo: Mana Photo / Shutterstock.com
Surfing’s version of hapless UK Ski Jumper Eddie the Eagle or the
Mozambique swimmer Eric the Eel would be Wade “Shiva” Glasscock.
Glasscock was born and bred in Texas, and didn’t take up surfing until
he moved to Hawaii at the age of 24.
After eight years of learning surfing in Hawaii he moved to Australia
and, at the tender age of 36, decided to have a crack at the World
Qualifying Series. He toiled on the WQS series, usually against surfers
half his age, for four long years suffering a spectacularly poor run of
results.
He surfed in around a dozen competitions per year, with his best
result at 17th in Portugal. In fact, that was the only event where he
ever progressed through a heat, and only after two of the other surfers
failed to show up. He reached a career high ranking of 425, before
giving up on his dream, the run of bad luck proving too much.
The Acidic Test – Rob Page
Photo Montage: Mpora.com
Whilst surfing and drugs have been intertwined since the very start,
and many surfers busted for their habits, perhaps none were as unlucky
as Australian Rob Page.
Page was unfortunate in that a) he was caught with a tiny single
scrap of paper (all be it one blotted with acid) and b) he was in Japan.
This was in 1992 and Page spent a total of 66 days in prison, of which
30 of them were spent in solitary confinement.
He later said, “I once asked my mum when I came out of Japanese
prison for possession of LSD, how come I ended up in there? And she
said, oh, it’s simple. You lost appreciation for the fundamental values
of life.” Or maybe he was just damn unlucky.
The King of Misfortune – Richie Lovett
Photo: aloha.com.au
In terms of crooked luck, the likable Australian pro surfer might
just take the cake. He had already been attacked by a shark and washed
into the Indonesian jungle by a tsunami, before being diagnosed with
cancer that ended his career.
Initially the shark attack was considered a once-in-a-lifetime piece
of bad luck, until in 1997 he was ripped from his bed in a jungle hut in
off G-Land in Java by a Tsunami and deposited 300 metres inland,
surviving the ordeal with just scrapes and bruises. “I WAS LEARNING TO WALK AGAIN WITH A HUGE PIECE OF METAL INSIDE ME”
His biggest test however came in 2005, when still ranked 23 in the
world, he was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer called clear cell
chrondrosarcoma.
“My life did a complete 180-degree turn; one minute I was
traveling as WCT competitor, the next minute I was learning to walk
again with a huge piece of metal inside me where the top of my femur
used to be,” Lovett wrote in his book The Big Sea.
Happily, Lovett beat Cancer, still rips, and now considers himself one of the luckiest people on the planet.
