Ask Carroll

[gardie]

Hi Nick

I have long wondered in the 2009 Eddie competition why Sunny Garcia came in after 3 waves.

He was within reach of winning when he came in after his third wave.

I recently came across an article by you on the comp that said that he had come in after three but he thought he had caught four.

It seemed to me like he still had time to get out for one more once told of this.

This all seemed to be ignored and overshadowed by Greg Long and Ramon Navaro performances

[Nick Carroll]

Wow gardie, way to come in to play

Look it can take some time to get out at Waimea Bay when it's 25' from the NNW as it was that arvo. Sunny came to the beach just ahead of Greg Long, and reviewing the footage from the day, the heat time was pretty much done. I think he'd have had buckleys of getting back out in time, he'd have needed a helicopter. He'd surfed superbly and would have been a great winner of the event but I don't think he minded, it was an amazing day.

[gardie]

Thanks Nick

I was trying to find the footage online as I going from memory about time left.

It was Sunny's surfing in his second heat that always had me wondering as it was incredible.

I never saw any press on it except the line that I found the other day from your article.

Always wanted to know more about why he came in

Would of been a day of days to watch it live

[Nick Carroll]

It was fantastic, an amazing day. If there's ever a contest I'd recommend to anyone to see live it's the Eddie. Big Waimea is crazy and the crowd is like a huge rock concert without the mess. You'll never forget it.

[foamy]

Hello Nick
I read an interview from a few years ago with Peter Cole on hisurfadvisory.com
He said he thought Waimea was changing. What do you reckon?

--------------------------------------------------------------
HSA: Has Waimea changed? Has the contour of the bottom changed so that it doesn’t break the same now?

PC: I think the sand is shifting in the middle. See what happened was, in ‘56 or ‘57, they pulled the sand out of Waimea Bay to put in the Ala Moana Shopping Center. So that Dillingham company, they grabbed the sand and moved that over into building Ala Moana. In doing that, they made it a lot deeper in the middle. If you look at the pictures before ‘55/’56 the diving rock is on sand. And the sand is going straight across--there’s no definition of an inlet. And the waves, when they broke, they broke straight across. So it was almost like a shorebreak situation.

What’s happening now is over time, the sand is shifting back to where it was before. So, we’re getting a more natural thing. Because when humans interfere they change things. So I think we’re getting back to where it’s more ledgy and more closed out. We used to be able to get out with no problem, and now, anytime it’s over eighteen feet, you gotta really time it to get out.

[channels]

2 Event wins and at least a semi now for Bourez in Fiji, surely the world title is his to lose now?

[ctd]

now, anytime it’s over eighteen feet, you gotta really time it to get out.

Some people live in a different world than me.

[Nick Carroll]

foamy I reckon Waimea changes season to season, there's a fair bit of sand in the bay and it moves around for sure. I don't have anywhere near Peter's perspective on the spot but from what little I know of other surf spots I would imagine for sure there have been changes over 25 or 50 year arcs too. It definitely seems as if you have to time it more carefully now even since I've been surfing there (around the mid 80s onward).

channels I reckon it's more Medina's. but I also reckon the whole scene is getting a massive shake-up. It's cool to see new names and new faces challenging for major places and wins at these events.

[pearceD]

Nicholas,
When on assignment at WCT events, how much time do you get to go surfing yourself i.e. are you in the water for the warm-ups before heats start? Do you make an effort to watch every heat or do replays help?
One more - are there any surfers that deliberately avoid you or other media personalities (yeah - i'll run with personality...) and vice-versa?

[Buff_Brad]

It was fantastic, an amazing day. If there's ever a contest I'd recommend to anyone to see live it's the Eddie. Big Waimea is crazy and the crowd is like a huge rock concert without the mess. You'll never forget it.

Indeed , I saw the 2004 Eddie and when Bruce Irons caught that frigging monster that Kelly was looking at sorta on the shoulder and rode it in to the grinding thumping square barrelling huge shorebreak where he casually pulled in (left) to oblivion and a perfect 100/100.

Crowd went nuts.

[Nick Carroll]

Nicholas,
When on assignment at WCT events, how much time do you get to go surfing yourself i.e. are you in the water for the warm-ups before heats start? Do you make an effort to watch every heat or do replays help?
One more - are there any surfers that deliberately avoid you or other media personalities (yeah - i'll run with personality...) and vice-versa?

Ummm I kind of only go to the fcuken things in order to have a surfing experience, so yeah, I surf as much as possible. But I watch as many heats as humanly possible, most times all but a small handful of 'em.

It really helps the reporting if you spend time in the water during warm-ups and other free surfing sessions, you can talk with pro surfers in a far more unguarded way and you also get to gauge the finer points about a surfer, how they navigate a crowd, how many waves they catch, who's sorta owning and who isn't. It all merges into one thing in a way, does that make sense?

Most of the surfers are pretty nice to me most of the time, some of them get the shits with something I've written and won't talk to me for a little while, I've only found one or two in my whole career who've just refused to move past that over time (one's no longer on tour, the other is). With a lot of them I almost become friends over the years, certainly friendly and respectful acquaintances, and with a very few, I do really connect. My sense is that the pros view different media "personalities" in different ways, some "personalities" are real bros and make a thing of being light hearted entertainment value for the surfers, there'll be a lot of hand-shaking and laughing with those guys but you don't really ever see 'em in the water. Other "personalities" are sorta "on the team", i.e. playing a role in the event production, and some pros are remarkably wary of these guys, maybe in the same way they're wary of the judges, they don't wanna get on their bad side. A small handful ask serious and informed questions of the pros and these reporters are always treated with a bit of respect, but aren't always "bros" if ya know what I mean.

I used to find some of that stuff tricky to negotiate but now I kinda couldn't give a fcuk in a way, like I am not there to make fun of anyone or to be some self aggrandising idiot, I just want to surf, watch, talk, analyse, report, I'm totally ready to cop flak but don't get much, maybe just because of my intentions and record being pretty clear to all. Or maybe because nobody gives much of a shit anyway.

[Scroty]

I'm getting worried, has anyone seen Steve since he went to get the kids?

[ctd]

Are there any regular reporters who can't surf?

What happens when, say, Sports Illustrated or the NY Times say 'we need a story on the surfing' and send some random reporter - do the tour surfers treat those guys (gals) with any respect, recognising they have a job to do, or give them shit?

Do you find that regular reporters/reporters who are serious surfers as well ask completely different questions than blow in reporters?

And, since I'm on a roll and havent had lunch so its the closest thing I get to food - in the tennis you get reporters asking really stupid questions because at the end of the day there is only so much you can say about a tennis match, and really a surfing heat (I mean, there is only 60 seconds of action per heat really). Does that happen on tour? Do you get bored of the same old stuff?

There you go, cross examination of the day...

(thanks!)

[Nick Carroll]

Fucken hell! ok

Yeah there is a few regular reporters who don't surf, or at least I've never seen 'em go surfing. Others who do surf but not very often. I think in general the surfers don't care and they treat those reporters as people with a job to do in support of their magnificently remunerated lives, so it's all just fine. It's important to understand by the way that the vast majority of top pro surfers have no regard for an average surfer's skill levels at all. Not that they are sneering or rude about it but they don't really feel like they're on the same planet surfing-wise at all, and thus they don't differentiate between most reporters who surf and the reporters who don't. Just being a surfer doesn't mean you're in their club; they call average surfers "the public".

Reporters who surf don't necessarily come up with better lines of enquiry than reporters who don't surf, it's more to do with how curious and intelligent you are. I see people come up with great q's right here on Realsurf and they're not reporters, they're just intrigued by something.

If a heavy hitter journo from SI or wherever is around, the surfers love it because they think he'll make them more famous, but that guy won't necessarily ask any good questions either, in fact he is very likely to construct a piece using a bunch of background gleaned from the better surf beat writers. I'm sure shearer, Sean Doherty and others will have had this experience -- once I had a very well-known American writer contact me, talk to me for hours and ask me for all my reporting on Kelly and AI, then used it to write a massive piece about their rivalry for the New York Times, not exactly verbatim but pretty close. It probably had a $10,000 payday. "I'll buy you dinner next time you're in town," he said. I didn't take him up on the offer.

Plenty of stupid questions are asked of pro surfers, usually not because the reporter is bored but because the reporter is essentially incurious and can only think up something dumb or token. If you've got half a brain you know what will bore you and what won't, that's why I don't go to many WCTs, maybe three a year. Many years ago I could go to every event on tour and find something cool to write about, now I can be really interested for three of 'em.

[ctd]

Thanks Nick and PP. I do appreciate (understand) the difference between a good writer and an expert who happens to write, I deal with that in my job all the time (the greater the expertise, as a general rule, the less accessible the writing).

And, of course, many sports reporters are not/never were expert players in their fields and can be very astute. But I do feel that a tennis or cricket or whatever writer can understand what it means to run around and hit a ball, even if they are hopeless; but a surfing writer can't really extrapolate any of their land based experiences into surfing without surfing (or body boarding or something like that).

That said, obviously there is the technical side of the reporting and the human interest side (and the commercial side and the travel side and all the rest), so I guess everyone picks what they are interested in or understands. But with only a small number of surfers on tour it must at times become a bit repetitive or difficult to find a new angle

Again, thanks for the repsonse.

[foamy]

they call average surfers "the public".

Nick, I thought you expressed that good and entirely fair point very concisely.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.

[Nick Carroll]

I do feel that a tennis or cricket or whatever writer can understand what it means to run around and hit a ball, even if they are hopeless

Maybe. Like I wasn't saying that the reporter who surfs doesn't have a potential advantage, they may well do, just that the pro doesn't see it.

I bet it's the same across other sports, like there's no way the Australian Test cricket team gives a fcuk if some reporter used to bat third for Kings or some shit.

[Animal_Chin]

I'm getting worried, has anyone seen Steve since he went to get the kids?

It's pretty rare that I actually LOL but that cracked me up