THE ORIGINAL Come to Honolulu So We Can Says Rarick
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BY TERENCE LOOSE hen Huntington Beach’s Peter Townend, best known as PT, sees what professional surfi ng has become in the four decades since he became the sport’s fi rst world champion, he is both stoked and amazed. Today, professional surfi ng’s champions are millionaire celebrities, fl ying fi rst class, W staying in beachfront manses and pampered by a dedicated entourage of trainers, coaches and videographers. Surfi ng is seen as a legitimate and healthy career path. And events are … well, actual events: the nine-day U.S. Open of Surfi ng, which PT helped establish in 1994, will bring a 500,000 spectators to Huntington Beach from July 26 to August 2, the prize purse at each of the 11 Championship Tour events is $525,000. That’s about as different an his characteristic explosive laugh experience as a wave rider could that follows approximately 98 get from when Australian-born percent of his sentences, which Townend was named champ in all demand exclamation points, 1976. At the end of that year, by the way. after scraping his way around In the end, for becoming the world to compete against surfi ng’s fi rst world champ, 20 or so other surfers in a Townend got lunch and had to ragtag assemblage of surfi ng give the trophy back – it still competitions, Townend was resides in the Canoe Club’s case. on the North Shore of Oahu, His income for that year was chasing big waves. A few months $26,000, mostly from shaping earlier, Hawaii’s Fred Hemmings surfboards, not from chasing the and Randy Rarick, founders “gypsy tour,” as it was called, of what would eventually where a win might just pay become today’s World Surf your way to the next event and League, announced they were second place meant you probably ➤ going to add up the points for weren’t eating protein that day. the year and declare a world Townend reckons he spent more surfi ng champ. Their goal was money chasing the tour around to legitimize surfi ng as a sport, the globe to win the world title and for that they needed a than he made. champion, says Rarick. “Back then nobody was “So,” says Townend, “Fred making any money. But it called me up one day and told was the experience of going me he had totaled up the points and laying the groundwork to and I was the champ. Could I legitimize professional surfi ng,” THE ORIGINAL come to Honolulu so we can says Rarick. “I remember PT take a photo for the paper?” saying, ‘By 1980 we’ll be Townend drove to Waikiki’s millionaires.’ That was optimistic Outrigger Canoe Club, where thinking; it took about 15 years Hemmings was waiting. longer than that.” 1976 “And he doesn’t even have a But while Townend was in trophy!” Townend says. Rarick the minority – no one believed says that’s because their dream so-called surf bums would ever to start a professional league was Townend rides on the north side of Huntington Beach Pier in 1998. get paid to ride waves – he SURF just that: a dream. “We wanted was proven right. “Today, on to get some promotional value the championship tour, you HUNTINGTON BEACH’S for PT as world champ, but there can go around the world, lose PETER TOWNEND AND A were no sponsors, so we didn’t even have enough money for a every single heat in all 11 events, and you’ll earn $99,000 in prize trophy,” says Rarick. money!” he says. TURNED-AROUND TROPHY “So he gets the key to the trophy cabinet and pulls out what Of course, anyone who surfs knows that even the most looks like an important trophy with something else inscribed on pampered pros of today don’t paddle out for the money or the CAUGHT THE VERY FIRST WAVE it. He turns it round backwards so you can’t see what it says, and fame. It’s all about the stoke, something Townend absolutely, OF PROFESSIONAL SURFING that photo appeared the next day in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. positively exudes to this day whenever he talks about surfi ng. STAR And that’s the birth of pro surfi ng right there!” says Townend with Which is basically always. Because whether it’s his time as a PHOTOGRAPHY BY: TOP: CINDY YAMANAKA, 70 COAST :: AUGUST 2015 LEFT: PETER TOWNEND AUGUST 2015 :: COAST 71 LIFE AQUATIC competitive professional surfer, or his role as “We didn’t have trainers and travel a surfi ng announcer, surfi ng coach, S u r fi n g accounts and entourages,” Townend says. “If magazine publisher or surf company consultant, you got hurt, you lied on the couch, drank a Townend’s entire existence has been dominated few beers and got up the next day and hit the with riding waves since he can remember. surf again.” Townend’s ocean life began in the waters And in those years leading up to Townend off Coolangatta, Queensland, as a young boy becoming the fi rst pro surfi ng world champ, in the 1960s. Already part of the “clubbies,” there was danger both in and out of the the volunteer lifeguarding and waterman clubs, water. In fact, they have come to be known Townend joined the fl edgling Kirra Surfriders as the infamous “Bustin’ Down the Door” Club, and for Christmas 1966, he got his fi rst years, because, as books and movies have well surfboard and started surfi ng Rainbow Bay documented, the birth of pro surfi ng was more every day. like a hard Wedge shore pounding than a soft “Because of the consistent waves, the nice Doheny slide. Townend, Ian Cairns and Wayne weather and the warm water, if you had any kind “Rabbit” Bartholomew, along with South of athleticism, you got African Shaun Tomson and his brother Michael, pretty good pretty quick. came to Hawaii with fi sts pumping, claiming So within two years, I was they were the best surfers on the planet. “We didn’t have in my fi rst Queensland To the Hawaiians, it was a truly offensive championships,” attitude, says Rarick. “They rubbed the trainers and travel he says. Hawaiians the wrong way because they were Townend was so brash and so aggressive in their attempt anything but the to prove that they could be as good, if not accounts and stereotypical surf bum better, than the Hawaiians,” says Rarick. of the day, however. “The Hawaiians had a more laid-back, let- entourages. If you He was a good student your-surfi ng-speak-for-you attitude. Well, these and his grades earned guys were letting their mouths speak for their got hurt, you lied him a scholarship to s u r fi n g . ” architecture school. But Townend admits they went about it on the couch, he turned it down to totally wrong. And even though Cairns and try to make a life from Bartholomew were the most fl amboyant, drank a few beers surfi ng – at a time when Townend cringes when he thinks of his there was no such thing own brashness. There were death threats as a professional surfer. and beatings and even rumors of a contract and got up the Townend stands with a remake of George Freeth’s wooden surfboard at the International Sur ng Museum. In 2014, the museum hosted “A Century of Stoke,” “My grandmother being taken out on Townend, Cairns and an exhibit that celebrated 100 years of sur ng at Huntington Beach. didn’t talk to me for 10 Bartholomew. next day and hit years!” says Townend. His “We clearly felt threatened,” says Townend, father and mother were who needed a police escort to his heat at that whom Townend had become friends with a few years earlier while the surf again.” a tad more supportive, year’s Pipeline Masters. “I got punched at Off living in Malibu. The fl edgling pro surf tour understandably didn’t even occasionally lending the Wall and had to go hide out in Kauai want their fi rst champ to divide his time. “But the movie paid – Peter Townend Townend money to get to before the Duke contest one year. It was all $1,000 a week and that was a lot of money, so I took it,” says the next contest. To pay eventually resolved and today I’m actually Townend, who ended up doubling for William Katt instead. for his dream, Townend good friends with the guy who punched me.” In 1977, he moved to Huntington Beach to be with the woman shaped surfboards and “The crazy thing is, if they had just who would soon become his wife and mother to his three kids. In wrote a column for his local newspaper: “In the let their surfi ng do the talking, it would 1979, after only a few more years on the pro surfi ng tour he helped Tube with Peter Townend.” have had great things to say,” says Rarick. establish, he became the U.S. national team’s coach and executive By 1972, Townend was part of arguably the Townend, Bartholomew, Tomson and Mark director and served for 10 years, while serving as Surfi ng Magazine’s greatest Australian national team ever assembled: Richards won the fi rst seven world titles publisher and advertising manager. Along the way, he produced a fi ve eventual world championships and the and, more important, proved they could TV show on surfi ng, became a color commentator on Prime Ticket inventor of the thruster surfboard design (Simon handle the powerful Hawaiian juice.