It was around this time that he started to notice the groups of bikini-clad girls hanging around the beach, particularly whenever there was a surfing competition on. The guys referred to them as ‘groupies’ or ‘babes’ and bragged about how many they’d had. He never really considered himself as good-looking, but the attention he was attracting from the younger girls seemed to contradict that opinion.
He had studied his naked form in the full-length mirror in his bedroom to work out whether there was something he was missing. His shaggy, sun-bleached blond hair was parted at the side, with a long fringe over his aquamarine blue eyes. It fell in layers to just above his shoulders. He had noticed his muscles starting to develop, particularly the ones he used for surfing — his triceps and chest muscles he used to quickly push himself to his feet, while his upper back and neck muscles helped him keep his chest up off the nose of the board, so he could paddle more efficiently, and his leg muscles were essentially the powerhouse — calves for balance and control, thighs for speed and direction. They were the ones that particularly ached after surfing all day.
He was of average height, compared to the other guys he hung out with. And his nose certainly wasn’t as big as the Cohen brothers — if anything, it tipped up slightly at the end. His teeth were straight and white and his lips full. All-in-all, he couldn’t understand the interest he was getting; but, as his father always said, ‘There’s no accounting for taste.’
Surfing is an art form, an expression of one’s creative and athletic impulses, slashed across the fluid, unpredictable canvas of the ocean surface. Over the next three years he’d honed his skills and his body to become one of the foremost virtuoso surfers in the area. By the time he was seventeen, he had surfed the entire San Diego coastline and had even competed in some events, winning trophies for his speed, control and power. That’s when he got spotted by a local surfboard shack and was offered a sponsorship deal. It didn’t provide him with much of an income, but it did pay for travel expenses and equipment costs — as long as he was doing well and wore the T-shirt.
He’d left home shortly after the bust-up with his old man to join the circus, which was the professional surfer’s circuit. Having passed his driving test the previous year, he used the money that his family had given him towards his first car to buy a 1999 Four Winds motor home for a dollar short of fifteen thousand from a local dealer. He hadn’t haggled with the salesman about the price because he was told that another three people were interested in it and he didn’t want to lose it. It slept five at a push, but most of the time it was just him and his two surfboards. He did have the occasional overnight guest; but, because of the transient nature of his chosen career, he was never in one place long enough to forge a lasting relationship.
His goal was to get on the Association of Surfing Professionals’ (ASP) World tour. However, for that he needed a more generous sponsor. His big break came when he was competing in the American Pro Surfing Series at Huntington Beach, California. It was a sixty-four man knock-out competition, based over five heats, with a fifty per cent elimination rate after each round. He’d managed to get down to the last eight and was up against some old pros. He knew that wave selection was the single most important factor for winning the heat, as did the other seven competitors.
The wave he selected would determine the manoeuvres he was able to perform; marks were awarded by the panel of judges on how radical and controlled those movements were over the functional distance of the wave. In short, the bigger the wave, the better chance he had to impress the judges with his speed and power. His technique for selecting a good wave started on the shoreline, where he would watch the swells come in, getting a feel for their breaking patterns and gauging their size. After a short time, he was able to predict how big an oncoming wave would be and where it would begin to break. He’d paddle out to the site and wait for the next big swell.
Catching the wave was the easy bit — it was what you did after that that would determine whether you received a high score or not. You can’t read the characteristics of a wave in advance; you have to be able to adapt your movement to suit the idiosyncrasies of your chosen ride. On this particular occasion, that ride turned out to be a real bitch. It started off okay — breaking to the right, the tip peeling back in a continuous line to form a twenty-foot glassy canvas on which to paint his turns.
He was about halfway to the beach when the centre of the wave collapsed; he narrowly avoided a wipeout with a power turn that took him away from the crashing surf. He had just completed this manoeuvre when the same thing happened in front of him. With no room to turn this time, he angled the board at the crest of the wave and popped over the top into the calmer waters behind the surf, knowing that he’d blown his chances of a decent score. Dejected, he paddled back to the beach and made his way to his motor home to brood, without even bothering to hear his scores. The consolatory pats on the back and sympathetic looks he received confirmed what he knew already.
He was halfway through his third bottle of Bud, when somebody wrapped on his door. He was in two minds as to whether to ignore it, when the door opened and the interloper stepped in.
‘Hey dude, don’t you wait to be invited in?’ Chad said grumpily.
‘Not usually,’ the man countered. ‘Name’s Hogan. I represent a clothing manufacturer. You may have heard of us.’ He handed his business card over.
Chad took it and read the details. ‘Steve Hogan, Sponsorship Manager, North America.’ That caught his attention, but what piqued his interest more was the logo on the top of the card. Rip Curl.
‘You did well out there, kid.’ There wasn’t a hint of pity in his voice.
‘I was totally walled off,’ Chad replied despondently.
‘Yeah, but before that, you did well. It was just bad luck — you did the best you could with the hand you were dealt. I’ve been in this business long enough to spot real talent when I see it. Let’s say you offer me a Bud and we’ll discuss what I have in mind?’
Two days later, Chad had a contract in his hand entitling him to a full sponsorship deal including a remuneration package of $250,000 per year. Who’s the moron now? he thought to himself as he signed his name at the bottom of the document.
That same thought crossed his mind again now as he waited for the biggest wave of his life. It was, of course, one of those urban legends that went around the surfing community — everybody had heard of somebody doing it, but nobody knew their name or had met the person who had done it. It was always, ‘Some dude in Thailand…’ or ‘This Aussie guy…’
There was always enough information to make it sound convincing, but never enough detail to prove it either way. Well, he was about to find out first-hand whether it was a fallacy or not. Could a pro surfer ride out a tsunami wave?
It had been just over three years ago that he’d signed up as one of Rip Curl’s rising stars. They had appointed him a Personal Assistant, who was responsible for organising his calendar, booking him into the tournaments, making the travel arrangements, setting up the photo shoots and interviews — everything, really, apart from wiping his arse. All he had to do was be at the designated pick-up point at the allotted time and he would be whisked off to the relevant beach via a plane, train, boat or automobile.
He had traded in his old motor home for the four and five-star hotels that the company were putting him up in. He wasn’t complaining — he got to do what he loved doing the most without the hassle of organising it. And the chicks! Those had increased exponentially. And it was a lot more comfortable screwing on a king-size Marriott bed than it was in the back of his old motor home. There had been a couple of girls that had wanted more than a casual relationship, but either he hadn’t found the right one or he just wasn’t ready to settle down. Either way, they were given the cold shoulder if they got too pushy.