Tom Curren Surfer Immortal
Hossegor, France. The small beach town is even more awash with surfing imagery than usual thanks to the highest-rated WQS event of the year, the Rip Curl Pro. Australia’s Shaun Cansdell is the man of the moment, having won the event by beating twenty-one-year-old Californian Dane Reynolds.
Whatever Cansdell’s fate, he looks a little more media friendly than his compatriots in the notorious Bra Boys film, which showed in Hossegor’s tiny beachside square on the contest’s last evening. The French audience seemed unsure of Sunny Abberton’s homage to the localism and testosterone endemic to the Sydney suburb of Maroubra.
The Bra Boys might not have found a home from home in Hossegor, but a dark, almost swarthy forty-three-year-old Californian had. Step forward, Tom Curren, arguably one of only three surfers to transcend surfing and etch his personality into mainstream consciousness.
Curren, though, is different. He’s from yesteryear. He’s famously reclusive. He once reputedly answered “Yeah” to every question put to him by a journalist. And yet he’s still one of the most charismatic sportsmen on the planet. After all, how many people can say they’re paid just to be themselves?
“It feels good,” says Curren of his long-standing deal with Rip Curl to be, well, Tom Curren. We’re talking on the terrace of the Hotel de la Plage overlooking Hossegor beach on a sunny, hot morning. Curren has strolled along the seafront to meet me. He shakes my hand firmly and smiles as Frank, twelve, and Pat, ten - his two children from his second marriage to Makeira - wander by, boards under arms. Their father asks where they’re going for a surf, says he’ll see them later, and reveals that – perhaps curiously, given their father’s natural foot stance - they’re both goofy-footers. “I think it’s from their skateboarding,” he says.
Day one of Curren’s surfing life occurred some time during his sixth year. Born in July 1964 in Santa Barbara, the eldest of three children to Pat and Jeanine, he was given a surfboard by his father, himself a pioneer of big-wave surfing in Hawaii. Pat Curren was one of the first men to surf Waimea Bay, and despite his abandoning the family when Tom was seventeen, his son has nothing but respect for him. He has previously said that his father is “one of the greatest men I’ve ever known,” and confirms that their relationship remains as strong as ever.
By the time Pat left Jeanine, herself a surfer and devout Christian, Tom Curren was already a winner. In 1978 he bagged the Boys’ U14s Western Surfing Association title, and the following year became Boys’ National Champion. As Pat was heading down the coast to a new life in Mexico, his son, in 1980, won the World Amateur Junior Championship. He could have turned pro but retained his amateur status because he wanted to win the Men’s title. This he duly accomplished in 1982.
Curren’s emergence as a pro surfer came in the early eighties, an era when the competition was as good as it gets. Three Australians – Mark Occhilupo, Gary Elkerton and Tom Carroll – were blazing their way around the pro circuit, and Martin Potter – South African or British, depending on which magazine you read – was redefining surfing with the sport’s first aerials. All save Elkerton would go on to win world titles, and Elkerton himself cemented his reputation with a Pipe Masters victory in 1989. But Tom Curren was always more revered, more enigmatic, and more sought after than any of them – then and now.
The Californian’s three world titles – in 1985, 1986 and 1990 – help to explain his enduring appeal, but do not give the full story. He rode his Al Merrick-shaped boards with unique and mesmerizing grace. He didn’t talk much and signed his fair share of autographs. Then, with two world titles in the bag, he quit pro surfing. He married his first wife, Marie (with whom he has two well-known surfing offspring, Leanne and Nathan), and went to live on the Basque coast, in France. If his decision to take time out stunned the surfing world, it was nothing compared to his comeback in 1990. Curren had to surf as a triallist to have any hope – and did just that, winning an unprecedented seven events to earn his third world title.
By 1992 Curren had notched up the respect in Hawaiian surf that had been a sine qua non of his father’s life. He won the Wyland Galleries Pro in heavy conditions, garnering plaudits for big-wave surfing that had already come his way for his pioneering exploits at Todos Santos. Curren was famous. He was loved. For every nuance of shyness and unease under the spotlight, the media and the public loved him all the more. And then he did what so few sportsmen in any arena manage to do. He quit at the top.
Although he has no plans ‘to do an Occy’ and make a serious return to the world tour, he does enter the occasional ASP event. He looks fit, healthy and composed. But what’s life for Tom Curren like today?
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