Robert Harold "Nat" Young (born November 17, 1947) is an Australiansurfer and author. Born in Sydney, New South Wales, Young grew up in the small coastal suburb of Collaroy. In 1964, he was runner-up in the Australian junior championship at Manly, and two years later was named world surfing champion in 1966. He won the title again (then called the Smirnoff World Pro/Am) in 1970. Young won three Australian titles in 1966, 1967 and 1969, and won the Bells Beach Surf Classic a record four times. Since retiring from professional surfing, Young has written several books about surfing and sailboarding in Australia. His son Beau has also seen some success in the sport, winning the World Longboard title in 2000. In 2000, Young was a victim of 'surf rage' when he was severely bashed on his home break of Angourie after a long-running feud and heated altercation with another local surfer. During his recovery he wrote a book titled Surf Rage, calling for greater tolerance and mutual respect in the surfing community, although Young admitted he had acted aggressively during his career (where he had earned the nickname "The Animal"), and had acted provocatively towards his attacker, who he met and forgave several months after the incident.
Joel Tudor is a world famous longboard surfer from San Diego, California. He started out in skateboarding and, while in his early teens, gained both recognition and sponsorship for this. On the water, his apparently effortless skill saw him win his first professional ASP competition at age 14. Unlike the vast majority of his contemporaries who were riding only modern short surfboards, he also rode the out-of-fashion longboard, and it was the longboard that catapulted him to worldwide fame in his mid-teens. His reputation was such that, when he was on a break, other surfers would sometimes leave the water to watch his silky mastery of such skills as nose-riding ("hanging five" and "hanging ten" - riding with the toes of one or both feet hanging over the nose of the board[1]). Admiration of Tudor was a major factor in the longboard revival of the 1990s. Despite wide recognition as the doyen of modern longboard riders, and regularly competing in the longboard world championships, it took seven attempts before he finally won this event in the Canary Islands in 1998. Joel now has his own surfboard manufacturing company, as well as selling wetsuits in Japan. Due to his skill on both longboards and shortboards, on big waves and small, Tudor is widely considered to be one of the best surfers alive, and is also known for being unusually open-minded with regard to the diverse equipment that can be used for wave riding.
Shaun Tomson was born on August 21, 1955 in Durban, South Africa. He is considered one of the world's most significant surfers and was the 1977world champion. He first gained notoriety while surfing at Jeffery's Bay. He currently lives in Montecito, CA and is active with the The Surfrider Foundation. He is involved with his family clothing venture, Solitude. Son Mathew died on April 24th, 2006 in Durban, South Africa from an accidental death caused by playing the "choking game."
Rell Kapolioka'ehukai Sunn (1950 – January 2, 1998 in Mākaha, Hawai'i) was an American world surfing champion. Known as "Queen of Makaha" and "Aunty Rell," she was a pioneer in the world of women's surfing. Rell Sunn was born in Makaha on Oahu in 1950, the fourth of Elbert and Roen Sunn's five children. Her father Elbert is Chinese, and her mother Roen is Hawaiian-Irish. Her Hawaiian middle name, Ka-polioka'ehukai, means Heart of the Sea. Sunn started surfing at age 4 at Makaha, and was entering competitive surf meets by the age of 14. At the time, not all surfing competitions has women's divisions, in which case she would enter the contest and compete successfully against her male counterparts.[1] Sunn was a pioneer in women's competitive surfing and water sports. She became Hawaii's first female lifeguard in 1977. In 1975, Sunn was one of the original members of the first women's professional surfing tour. Faced with what they saw as frustrating inequities between male and female surfers, Sunn, along with other female surfers, founded the Women's Professional Surfing Association in 1979.[2] She also founded the Women's Surfing Hui (organization) in Hawaii. In 1982, she ranked first in the international professional surfing ratings. In 1982, during a pro surf meet in Huntington Beach, California, Sunn felt a lump in her breast which turned out to be breast cancer. When she was diagnosed in 1983, her prognosis was for one year. Sunn continued to surf everyday after her diagnosis, despite the pain and chemotherapy associated with the disease. Following her diagnosis, Sunn became a radio disc jockey and surf reporter, a physical therapist at a Waianae care home, and a counselor at a cancer research center[1]. She helped pilot a program for breast cancer awareness at the Wai’anae Cancer Research Center that involved educating local women about the causes and prevention of breast cancer. During the next 14 years, her cancer went into remission three times, and she underwent a mastectomy and a bone marrow transplant. Sunn died on January 3, 1998. Over 3,000 people attended her memorial service, where her ashes were scattered in the ocean off Makaha. Sunn was married three times, most recently to Dave Parmenter in 1995. She has one daughter, Jan (who is married to Tony Kaumana), and two grandchildren, Kamalani and Caiden Kaumana. In August 1996, Sunn was honored with a granite stone on the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame. In 1997, an award-winning documentary about her life titled Heart of the Sea was filmed by filmmakers Charlotte Lagarde and Lisa Denker.
Mike Stewart (1963 - ) is a nine time World Champion bodyboarder, one of the early pioneers of the bodyboarding sport, a pioneer of big-wave tow-in surfing and also a champion bodysurfer. He was the former undisputed number one bodyboarder in the world, prior to the establishment of the World Tour. Having ridden bodyboards since the inception of the sport he is one of the most experienced bodyboarders currently in the tour. He has won the annual Banzai Pipeline line event a record 11 times, from which 8 earned him the world title, and has been crowned the Pipeline Bodysurfing Classic champion a record 10 times. He is the only bodyboarder to have been competing in the Banzai Pipeline event since 1982. He has received the title Mister Pipeline for being the best wave rider of any kind, the only non stand-up surfer to achieve this title. He is father to two kids and lives in Oahu with his family.
Richards was born and grew up in Newcastle, son of Ray and Val Richards, both keen beachgoers. They worked at the Wire Rope Works, Ray Richards as an account, but he wanted more than that career could offer and started a business selling second-hand cars, at a time when new cars were too expensive for most people. Together they setup a showroom at the end of Hunter St and lived in an apartment above it. In the late 1950s Ray saw the new balsa and fibreglassmailbu surfboards, which Greg Noll and other visiting Californians had brought with them in 1956. The new boards were shorter and more manoeuvrable than the solid timber boards used until then. He bought himself one, and when he saw how much it impressed people he made a decision to branch into selling them too, buying from early manufacturers in Sydney. So the business came a combination car yard and surf shop, and in time the cars gave way to the surfboards and it became a dedicated surf shop, one of the first in Australia. So when Mark was born in 1957 he was always around surfboards, growing up with surf-o-planes and pint-sized longboards. He learnt to surf in gentle waves at Blacksmiths Beach, about 15 minutes south of Newcastle, a beach partly sheltered by the breakwater on the northern side of the entrance to Lake Macquarie. The family also went to Rainbow Bay on Queensland's Gold Coast for holidays, where he surfed Snapper Rocks. He was also very keen on cricket when young. Richards surfed many junior competitions around Australia, taking time off school to go in some cases. He also made trips to Hawaii for winter on the North Shore as a teenager. The highlight of his junior career was a win at Margaret River in 1973. In mid 1973 Richards father allowed him to leave school mid-way through fifth form, to pursue surfing. Anyone could leave after fourth form, but that was usually to take up an apprenticeship. To leave for surfing was radical at a time when surfers were regarded as long-haired layabouts. The deal with his father was that if it didn't work out in a year then he had to get a trade.
At the end of 1974 Richards returned to Hawaii for the North Shore winter. This was his fourth trip, and his first taste of really big waves. He got a late entry into a contest at Waimea Bay, and did well enough on the first day of competition to make the semi-finals the next day. That day the surf had jumped and 30 foot cleanup sets were closing out the Bay. Even local big wave riders were saying it was too big to compete. Organiser and 1968world title holder Fred Hemmings had other ideas; with sunshine, offshore winds and television coverage he threatened to go out himself if nobody else wanted to. Richards made a decision to go. At 17 years old and without Waimea experience nobody would have thought less of him if he didn't, but he felt to walk away would end his hopes of surfing professionally, and put him back in Newcastle at some unappealling apprenticeship. He went with survival uppermost in his mind, and reckoned his first wave twice as big as anything he'd surfed before. By the end of the heat he was game enough on the monsters to actually bottom turn, yet was glad not to reach the final and have to go back out. In time he came to enjoy big waves, without being regarded as a big-wave specialist. Image was important for Richards, and in 1975 he had Hawaiian artist Albert Dove design a superman-style badge with "MR" inscribed in it. He used that logo on all his boards and wetsuits for most of his career. Richards was interested in twin-fin surfboards and in shaping. At the Surfabout in 1976 he saw Reno Abellira on a highly manoeuvrable twin-fin fish and thought something like that would be better than a single-fin for small waves. Back in Hawaii again for the 1976/77 winter, aged 19, he took his father's suggestion to pay for shaping lessons from noted pioneer Dick Brewer. It meant Richards was able to put his thoughts about design into actual foam. He credits Brewer for the style of shaping he came to use. Brewer made Richards a twin-fin, and Richards took aspects of that and Abellira's fish for his own designs. The result was boards faster and more manoeuvrable than the single-fins of the day.
By 1979 Richards reckoned his career as shaping primarily, and just competing at home in Australia and in Hawaii where he would go for the northern winter anyway. In Australia that year he had a strong win at the Stubbies, and another strong win in small waves at Bells Beach, but couldn't make a clean sweep at the Surfabout (relocated to Bells that year). The tour went to Niijima in Japan, the first time tour events had been held in Japan. Richards was not focused on title ratings points and might not have gone except he had a Japanese sponsor. In four events there in small waves Richards got a 1st, a 2nd and two 5ths, which put him well in the ratings lead. Richards didn't go to the two-event South African leg, instead returning to Australia to make boards. Past world title winners hadn't reaped any great financial reward, so he reckoned he was better off putting his shaping first. So going into the last two events in Hawaii his lead had evaporated. Richards came 4th in the Pipeline Masters, which advanced him against Wayne Bartholomew and Cheyne Horan when they made early exits. Then at the World Cup at Haleiwa fortune smiled on him in good 6-8 foot swell. Bartholomew went out early, and another contender Dane Keoloha made a tactical error of waiting for big sets which didn't come and was out. It came down to the final, which was Peter Townend against Richards. If Townend won then Horan got the world title, and if Richards won then he got it. In that final the two jostled for the inside position, both stubborn and wasting time out well past the break. His girlfriend (later wife) Jenny Jobson had arrived in Hawaii just in time for the final and thought he was going to be so stubborn that he'd give up the title rather than give up the inside. Finally Richards reckoned he was not in the lead and had to get some waves. He was so nervous he fell on a couple, but in the end did enough to take the win and take the title he hadn't even intended competing for. The title presentation was in Haleiwa, and consisted only of a Rolex watch and a plaque with a Pan Am logo. But Surfing magazine gave him the honour of a head-shot on the cover instead of their normal action shot, commissioned from rock photographer Norman Seef in Los Angeles. For 1980 Richards changed his strategy, and set out deliberately to get a second world title, doing the full tour. Although he'd won the ratings in 1979 he wasn't universally thought the best surfer, with Dane Kealoha reckoned the best by many. Richards was also competing against Wayne Bartholomew, Cheyne Horan and Peter Townend. In the end his results were very strong and took the 1980 title by a record number of points, and ended the season as the surfer against whom others were judged. Richards won in 1981 and 1982 too, with his chief rival being Cheyne Horan. In 1982 Richards' main sponsor, Lightning Bolt, suddenly dropped him. The reason was a mystery, he'd just won his fourth world title and was at the peak of his popularity, but they declined to renew for another year. The Lightning Bolt Australia division reckoned that treatment shabby and signed him up for several years. It turned out the parent company was in severe financial trouble, and it in fact folded, putting most of its Hawaiian staff out of work. Right through Richards' career his parents went with him to see him compete, within Australia at least. They preferred sitting in among the crowd, no doubt a little out of place among the teenagers and surfie types, even though they would have been welcome in the VIP areas. Richards and his parents were close and he would celebrate a win by having a meal with them, a marked contrast to surf and party animals of the time.
For 1983 and following years Richards chose not to defend his title, and to travel and compete less, due to back troubles and the pressure of being on top. It turned out he was unable to compete for 1982 anyway, an ankle injury on a big day at home at Dixon Park kept him on dry land for five months. Richards had suffered back problems throughout his career. His legs were a little shorter and trunk a little longer than usual which meant that he tended to pivot not at the hips but a couple of vertebrae up, straining the ligaments surrounding them. He reckoned a poor diet and lack of stretching or exercise (apart from surfing) hadn't helped either. His back had developed a reverse curvature, with the lower vertebrae sticking out noticeably. He required regular physiotherapy to keep it mobile, and in later years it worsened to the point of making him something of a weekend surfer, since too much would aggravate it, obviously a very frustrating situation for a surfer. Today Richards still lives in Newcastle with his wife and three children and runs the Mark Richards Surf Shop in Hunter St, the same shop started by his parents.
Michael Peterson (born 24 September1952), known as MP, is an Australiansurfer. He was among the best Australian surfers in the early to mid 1970s, noted for his deep tube riding skill, especially at Kirra on the Gold Coast. He was Australian champion in 1972 and 1974 and won many other major surfing competitions. Schizophrenia (only eventually diagnosed) and drugs cut short his career and his surfing became the stuff of legend. Many of the details of Peterson's life remained obscure until Sean Doherty's biography MP: The Life of Michael Peterson was published in 2004 (on which this article is primarily based).
Peterson's family lived in several places when he was very young before settling at Tweed Heads and Coolangatta on Queensland's Gold Coast. He grew up there with his mother Joan, younger brother Tommy, and younger sisters Dorothy and Denice. As a boy he was in surf lifesaving and in the Greenmount Surf Life Saving Club won many junior titles for swimming. Being a clubbie was uncool in those days but when he got old enough to be worried by that sort of thing he stayed because it meant a locker and a warm shower at the beach. The price was a half-day a month on surf patrol, dressed in sluggos, watching swimmers. He had no patience for sitting around and he and Tommy would arrange to be on patrol together for company. Peterson got started surfing first on surf-o-planes, then polystyrene Coolites. Money was very tight for the family, his mother Joan worked long, long hours peeling prawns and all sorts of jobs just to make ends meet, so the boys couldn't own a board (of any kind), only hire or borrow, either from Billy Rak at Greenmount or Johnny Charlton at Kirra who ran tourist hire businesses. The boys ended up working for Rak for two summers, setting up and lugging boards around for tourists etc. The first boards Peterson owned, in early 1966, were ones broken so badly when washed over the rocks at Greenmount (before the days of leg ropes) that their owners didn't bother collecting what remained. The boys would take them home, make rough repairs and head back out in the water on them. They also found surf club membership had another advantage – weekend surfers from Brisbane would leave their boards at the club during the week, so there was a great choice to sneak out and ride. In September 1967 around Peterson's 15th birthday the family moved to units in Tweed St, Coolangatta and the boys setup a board shaping bay underneath. They figured it'd be cheaper to make boards than to buy, and got resin and fibreglass offcuts from local factories. For blanks they used cut-down old longboards. A lot of the local kids couldn't afford new boards either, so the little business flourished, expanding to Peterson's friend Pete Townend's garage too. Unknowingly, the cut-downs they were making and surfing put them right in the middle of the shortboard revolution. 8 foot boards would be cut down to 6'8", or to 6'0 or right down to 5'1, though they soon found that they'd gone too far with 5'1 when they got crunched at big Kirra. The shortest they ever got to was 4'3 for friend Kerry Gill, who actually found that board went well for him. Peterson's first new board, a proper board to his mind, came in 1968. His mother offered that if he won the Greenmount Surf Lifesaving Club championship then she'd buy him one. With his always competitive drive spurred on by that prize he was a convincing winner, and two weeks later got a 7'11 board from local shaper Ken Gudenswager.
In February 1971 young Alby Falzon was on the Gold Coast filming for Morning of the Earth during one of the best runs of swell ever seen there (12 continuous weeks rarely below head high). He'd earlier run a picture of Peterson in his magazine Tracks with an article about the underground Gold Coast scene, and on a particular day happened to be filming at Kirra while Peterson was taking the place apart. The result was a 3 minute sequence in the film, and many stills printed in Tracks. The shot of Peterson that stood out became known simply as "the cutback", it had Peterson tall and muscular, long hair flying, doing a big cutback at Kirra. That shot became the cover for the July 1972 issue of Tracks too (after the film was released). Peterson didn't go to the local premiere of the film (10 January1972). His mother Joan drove him up to the hall at Miami High (his old school) but he balked at being the centre of attention and they went home again. His nervousness at presentations and gatherings would be repeated many times in the future. One of Peterson's secrets for surfing barrels at Kirra was the rocker (underside curvature) on his boards. Instead of having the nose start to lift from somewhere close to the end of the board, he moved the apex back near the middle and would ride it with one foot either side. By shifting weight onto the back foot the board would be on the back part and would stall, slowing down to get back deeper in the tube. And by shifting weight forward onto the front part it'd shoot forward. He told Mike Perry who shaped along side him for a time "It's just like cheating, man." [edit] Early contests In 1971 Peterson won the Kirra Pro-Am contest, the first Queensland contest to offer any prize money ($150), and following that the Queensland Titles which had its final round at Kirra. That title earned him a start in the Australian Titles held at Bells Beach (incorporated into the Bells Beach Classic). He did poorly there, with his narrow 5'9 board unsuited to the fatter waves. Back in Coolangatta the police had an unofficial campaign to clean up the beaches, getting rid of marijuana and the undesirable types who didn't suit the family-oriented tourist destination the local chamber of commerce wanted to promote. Surfers were on the top of the list of targets (and on occasions they weren't carrying anything the police were not averse to planting something). Peterson had been a heavy pot smoker for some time and on 24 January1972 got arrested for possession and supply, but was lucky in court and got a $500 fine instead of 3 months jail. That bust curbed his habit for a time, but not very long. He found pot relaxed him, one of the few things that could dull a growing whirlwind of thoughts in his head (almost certainly an early symptom of his later diagnosed schizophrenia). In coming years he was well known for having a couple of joints before or after surfing, even before contests. Others might have found pot made them unable to concentrate properly at a contest, but Peterson had no such worries. What he didn't do, incidentally, was get drunk, neither when young nor when older. At a nightclub he might well have had some acid, or be stoned, or whatever, but while everyone around would be drinking he'd just have lemonade.
In 1972 Peterson successfully defended his Queensland Title, narrowly beating friend Pete Townend. (Townend ended up with an unenviable record for second place finishes in his career.) The win put Peterson into the Australian titles again, but he almost didn't get there. Paul Neilsen was the reigning Australian champion but hadn't made the Queensland titles final and so hadn't qualified as such to defend his Australian title. His club "Windansea" from Surfers Paradise hatched a plan to bring up Peterson's drug conviction (as if any of them had never indulged) at the inter-club meeting and get him ousted, in favour of Neilsen. The meeting descended into chaos and the selections were put to a vote, with the result Billy Grant was sacrificed. Over the years Peterson's schizophrenia would make him imagine all sorts of plots, this was perhaps the only time there really was one. The Australian titles were held that year at North Narrabeen in Sydney. In the second round Peterson surfed with energy, but also some luck, getting practically the only good waves that came through, and making it to the final. For the final the ocean went completely flat and the organisers had to cancel it, instead declaring Peterson the winner (with Pete Townend second, yet again). That win then sent Peterson to the 1972World Titles in San Diego. It was a wild time, with surfers practically taking over the Travelodge hotel there. Peterson made it through his first round heat, then in the second round in 1.5x head high waves at Oceanside he got a full 5 second tube ride, which one judge saw and scored 19 out of 20, but the other two didn't. Only later when they compared scores did they realize the other two hadn't seen him go in, and had only scored what they saw at the end. But it was too late, the scores stood and Peterson was eliminated. If fate had meant Peterson to get a world title then 1972 would have been the year for it. As it happened though his most dominant year, 1974, fell in between this last 1972 amateur world title and the first professional title in 1976.
The Bells Beach Classic in 1973 offered a $1000 prize, which was very substantial at that time, and was to be run under the new "points per manoeuvre" system which had been trialled at the Hang Ten event in Hawaii a few months earlier. The idea was to eliminate subjectivity from judging, it was to be just a matter of counting moves completed. In the first few rounds in big messy conditions Peterson didn't do well and was outside the top ten on total points. On the last day he had a bit of luck when the leader Midget Farrelly came down with a bad flu and had to withdraw. Peterson was still well behind but he got a bigger board and started bouncing around making turns like crazy. By the end he thought he hadn't done enough and didn't hang around while the judges did their arithmetic. In fact he'd won and was amazed when told. The presentation was supposed to have been on the beach but it was so cold the organisers moved it to the local pub. Peterson's speech was characteristically short, "I just want to thank everyone", before he disappeared to the back of the room. The 1973 Australian titles were held at Margaret River in big surf. Peterson was right up with the leaders through the early rounds, but it was fellow Queenslander Richard Harvey who got the win (and Pete Townend second, again). Back on the Gold Coast Peterson did more board shaping, with Furry Austen enticing him away from Joe Larkin's factory with the offer of more money.
1974 was a big year for Peterson, his most successful in contest results. It started with a second place finish to Rabbit Bartholomew in the Queensland titles though. Peterson had a bit of a feud going with Bartholomew in those years. It started, as these things do, over a trivial enough thing, Peterson hadn't paid Bartholomew back for a cab ride they'd shared in Hawaii in early 1972. But with rivalry in surf competitions, it all escalated to the point where Peterson thought Bartholomew was stalking him or somehow out to get him (which wasn't the case). They patched up their differences in later years, but in 1974 it really burned Peterson to lose the Queensland titles to Bartholomew (for a second year running). Peterson then won the Kirra Pro-Am, the start of a remarkable run of wins. The next event was the Bells Beach Classic where instead of the come from behind win the previous year he was well in control and won by a big margin. The contest was still under the points per manoeuvre system and he milked it, even slipping in old school longboard moves that were still on the scoring card. This contest was also where he found that showing up from nowhere just minutes before a heat really played with his opponents heads and made his blitz in the water even more effective. The inaugural 2SM/Coca-Cola Surfabout was held in May 1974. Coke didn't just dip their toe into surf sponsorship, they went into it in a big way, offering a $2400 first prize, which was a new record for an Australian contest. It drew surfers from around Australia and the world, including some like Nat Young who had otherwise become disillusioned with the contest circuit. Pete Townend lead all the way to the final day and it was looking like Townend first and a young Mark Richards second. But Peterson just kept gaining and gaining and it played on Townends nerves. Townend slipped back (to fifth in the end) and Peterson came through the winner. The Australian titles for 1974 were held at Snapper Rocks and Burleigh Heads. Peterson started slowly then crushed his opponents in tubes at Burleigh. On one tube he disappeared for so long the judges thought he'd fallen, until the crowd went wild when he popped out almost at the beach. It was also during 1974 that Pete Townend gave Peterson the nickname "MP". Peterson used to call him "PT" all the time, so Townend in turn coined "MP" and used it in newspaper columns he wrote, and it stuck. Peterson didn't much like "MP" in later years, associating it with hype and image, though it's still how he's most often known.
In September 1974 Peterson started his Michael Peterson Surfboards business, with a factory in Currumbin next to the Burford Blanks factory, and a shop at in Musgrave St, Kirra, right opposite the Kirra beach. His name by then was so big it seemed a sure winner. A caption in the Brisbane Courier Mail wondered if he could be "Australia's first millionaire surfer". He had a rather inflated idea of his own business acumen, but did have the sense not to try to go it alone, he brought in Peter Hallas as a partner. Hallas was a fellow Kirra surfer and had worked alongside Peterson at Hohensee's factory. They had a total of seven staff and would sell boards up and down the coast, often delivered by Peterson himself in his panel van. Orders for boards soon flooded in, more than they could fill. The boards they supplied were actually more designed for Peterson's level of skill than the average surfer, but the "MP" label certainly made them sell. The problem was that Peterson wasn't very business minded and would too often sell stock out the back door or treat the business like a personal bank when it was going well. Eventually Hallas despaired and by mutual agreement let himself be bought out by Peterson's mother Joan for just $1000. If run well the business should have been a gold mine, but he thought getting out was the smartest thing to do, and he remained friends with Peterson. Joan took charge better, but couldn't much improve the overall operation. She ended up walking away in 1977 when Peterson brought in a girlfriend who Joan strongly disapproved of, and shortly after that the business folded.
Meanwhile back in 1974/75 at his factory Peterson shaped for himself a 6'6" six-channel triple-flyer pintail which became known as the Moonrocket, or the Fangtail, or the Christmas Tree. His staff laughed when they saw it, wondering how anyone could possibly surf it. The fang-like flyers at the back and finger-deep channels also made it a glasser's nightmare (so Peter Evans, who had that job at the factory, wasn't laughing). The board was Peterson's secret weapon for the Pa Bendall contest at the start of 1975 at Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast. There was a lot of general weirdness on the beach at that contest, like Keith Paull going around with his head shaved and painted purple and blue. But Peterson's board brought him victory (and a $2000 prize) in knee high slop, continuing his run of success from 1974. Later the board passed to a young Peter Harris who worked at Peterson's factory, in lieu of wages owed when the business shut down. Harris surfed it until it became hopelessly waterlogged and then gave it to a friend's son on the Sunshine Coast, where, so the story goes, a famous piece of surfing memorabilia finished up as landfill.[1] In 1995 Tommy Peterson made a replica of the board. It was presented to Kelly Slater when Slater won the peer poll in Australia's Surfing Life magazine that year.
Peterson first tried heroin some time in 1974, and later in 1975 got into it in a big way. The Queensland Police had done such a good job cleaning up the pot on the Gold Coast that they'd created a vacuum, which was filled by a far worse drug, heroin, cheap and very pure. Many local surfers got into it, and, with everyone naive, many died from overdoses. Rabbit Bartholomew has written about that time too, he lost twelve friends to overdoses. Peterson had a phobia about needles, so he didn't inject, instead he'd chop the heroin up and snort lines. His brother Tommy (who himself wrestled with heroin addiction over the years) thought that was the only thing that saved Michael from an overdose, the fact he couldn't get enough up his nose at one time to be fatal. All this time Peterson's schizophrenia was gradually getting worse too, he became ever more erratic, hostile to friends, and imagined plots against him. These were classic symptoms in retrospect, but at the time those who knew him just thought it was the drugs, certainly he'd done enough to make anyone act weird. His friends later wished they'd done much more for him at the time.
At the start of 1976 Peterson went to New Zealand for the first event in the new IPS professional world tour. There weren't many big names there, they were in Hawaii for the much more prestigious Duke contest, and Peterson got the win. There was a certain irony in the first event of the new professional era being won by a man who was in so many ways the opposite of budding professionals like Pete Townend (the eventual winner of the series that year). In 1977 the inaugural Stubbies contest was held at Burleigh Heads. It was organised by Peter Drouyn and he devised the "man on man" heats system fot it (which is used in ASP World Tour contests today). Just two surfers in the water suited Peterson, he could focus all his psyche-out energy on just the one poor bloke in the water with him. He got through to the semi-finals comfortably where he came up against Rabbit Bartholomew. In front of a huge crowd the two took on 6 foot freight trains. Peterson went deep in the tube and took chances from way out on the point. Bartholomew made high-percentage moves in the pocket. Scoring was based on the whole heat and it split the judges with Peterson getting the win. Just who surfed better that day was a hot topic of debate for many years. The final was then Peterson against a young Mark Richards, MP versus MR. Richards thought he couldn't match Peterson's wave hassling and decided just to take whatever came through while Peterson paddled back out. It was still quite close, with Peterson getting the win and the $5,000 prize. That turned out to be his last major contest victory. He spent the next few years as something of a nomad, hardly known to anyone, taking erratic surfboard shaping jobs, sometimes dealing, and alternating time on and off drugs. To get himself clean he'd go camping to a favourite spot at the base of Mount Warning with big bags of health food like fruits and nuts and just be by himself. Later in court (below) his solicitor told the court he'd tried about 30 times altogether to get clean. He surfed intermittently during those years, and got into windsurfing as recreation instead, just in a small way, perhaps attracted by its solo nature.
On the evening of 9 August1983 Peterson was on his way to Noosa to go windsurfing the next day and had pulled up at Beenleigh south of Brisbane to sleep. A police car with siren blaring came by and it set him into a panic and he drove off as fast as he could. He hadn't realized the police car was actually going the other way. The policeman saw him and took up a pursuit. The pursuit turned into something straight out of a Hollywood movie, 20 police cars following, two side-swiped, and pedestrians nearly killed when he mounted the footpath at one point. The chase went on at high speed all the way to Brisbane where a further 15 police cars setup a roadblock on the Story Bridge, at which point Peterson stopped. It made national news and became known in surfing circles simply as "the chase". He was held in a cell overnight at Beenleigh then taken to Boggo Road Gaol. The police assumed he was on drugs and took his car, The Falcon, apart looking for them. All they found was some vitamin C, part of his health kicks. The car ended up in so many pieces it was sent to the wreckers. Peterson's luck with the law had come to an end and he was sentenced to a year's jail, and his driver's license permanently revoked. The judge recognised heroin alone couldn't explain Peterson's sorry state and ordered a psychiatric report, but it didn't provide a diagnosis and didn't help him. Peterson started his sentence at Boggo Road, and in fact was there during some of the infamous riots (but stayed in his cell). His mother Joan lobbied her local state MP, the justice minister and the prisons minister for medical help for Michael, and eventually he was moved to Wacol Prison Hospital on 25 December1983 for psychiatric treatment. His schizophrenia was, at long long last, diagnosed and he received Mellaril medication. He also took two electroshock treatments in the hope they would help (giving his own consent for that). At the end of his sentence Peterson returned to the Gold Coast and lived either at care facilities or with his mother. His medication helped considerably but he lived those years almost as a recluse, rarely seeking out former friends. A poor diet and the medication (especially Clozaril) saw his weight balloon, to the point where those who knew him in his lanky muscular prime in the 1970s could scarcely recognise him. Like most schizophrenics Peterson heard voices, but he was one of the lucky few whose voices are friendly and he could chat away to them, or sort of marshal the troops when trying to keep to a diet.
Through 2002 and 2003 Peterson cooperated with surf writer and Tracks editor Sean Doherty on a biography of his life, bringing light to many aspects life that had only been the stuff of surfing legend. Peterson had been well enough in recent years to attend a few surf functions, including a contest organised by his old Kirra Surfriders club in 2002 called the MP Classic in his honour. It raised about $10,000 to support various local mental health services like those who looked after him over the years. He hasn't surfed since some time in the mid 1980s, but told Doherty "I haven't given it away! Who told you that? Is that what's getting around?". His friends have hopes that maybe on a mini-mal somewhere away from prying eyes his spark might be rekindled; many of his peers (Rabbit Bartholomew say) still surf.
Fausto Intilla, inventore e divulgatore scientifico,è di origine italiana ma vive e lavora in Svizzera (Canton Ticino).I suoi ultimi libri sono: "Dio=mc2" , "La funzione d'onda della Realtà" e "Verso una nuova scienza di confine" , tutti pubblicati dall'editore Lampi di Stampa, Milano. Nel campo delle invenzioni invece, il suo nome è legato alla “Struttura ad albero”, una delle più note strutture anti-sismiche per ponti e viadotti brevettata in Giappone e negli Stati Uniti (si veda: US Patent Office). Il suo indirizzo e-mail è: f.intilla@bluewin.ch;la sua Home Page è: http://www.oloscience.com_____________________________________
Fausto Intilla, inventor and scientific popularizer, is of Italian origin but lives and works in Switzerland (Ticino County).English books by F.Intilla: "The Synchro Energy Project, beyond the Holographic Universe" (Published by "Lampi di Stampa",Milan,Italy - 2008). In the field of inventions, however, his name is linked to the “Tree Structure” , one of the most popular anti-seismic structures for bridges and viaducts patented in Japan and in the United States (see: www.uspto.gov).
