Pittwater Life May 2023 Issue

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Swell times returning News Damien Hardman has no need to set an alarm. Force of habit wakes the local legend every morning around five, and so long as the waves are decent, he’s wet by first light, surfing as impressively as a fit 57-yearold body will allow. “The head knows what it wants to do, the body can’t always do it,” says the twotime world champion, revered in his pomp as The Iceman. “I’ve had a hip replacement and I’ve got a bad back, but, you know, I can get through it if the waves are good.” Between 17-24 May, however, Hardman will deviate from his dawn routine. That’s when the World Surf League (WSL) is coming to North Narrabeen in the form of the GWM Sydney Surf Pro, a Challenger Series (CS) event featuring the world’s best up-and-coming male and female surfers as well as the high-fliers who’ve missed the midseason cut on the Championship Tour (CT). The top 10 finishers in the six-event CS qualify for next year’s main tour. While Hardman could squeeze in a surf each morning before the start of competition, his instinct is to make way for the elite. “It’s their time,” he says. Hardman, who chats with Pittwater Life in the upstairs office of his spacious Rip Curl Narrabeen store, will be among the thousands of locals expected to cram the foreshore to see 128 of the world’s best board-riders take on one of Australia’s most famous and consistent breaks. The WSL caravan last pulled into North Narrabeen two years ago, when regular CT stops in Victoria and Queensland were off limits due to COVID lockdowns. Recalling the 2021 Rip Curl Narrabeen Classic, Hardman’s enthusiasm for what unfolded is undimmed. “At the time, there was almost no sport running in Australia, everyone had been starved of activity, so people would have gone to watch lawn bowls,” he says. “It was the perfect storm for surfing. And it was great for the local community, great for the whole of the Northern Beaches. It was the biggest crowd I’ve seen at a surfing event, certainly in Australia, in the last 10 years.” A competitor at that event, the just-retired Olympic medallist Owen Wright, echoes Hardman’s recollections. “The crowds were insane, man,” Wright says. “I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it.” In the wake of that resounding success, the WSL, Destination NSW and the Northern Beaches Council inked a deal to bring the Sydney Surf Pro to the Northern Beaches until next year. “And rightly so,” says Wright. “North Narrabeen deserves an event for being so steeped in surfing culture.” Indeed. The heady scenes of 2021 were but a recent chapter in a rich history, much of CAN’T WAIT: Former World campion Damien Hardman. which Hardman has lived. The eldest of five kids, he grew up 300 metres from ‘Northy’, the playground of 1970s stars such as Col Smith, Mark Warren, Terry Fitzgerald and Simon Anderson. Young Damien began surfing at the age of eight after plucking a Wallace pop-out board from the local tip. It was in that same year, 1974, when North Narrabeen stamped itself as a surfing hotspot, hosting the first of many Coke Surfabouts, the brainchild of former Sydney newsman Graham Cassidy, who’d later become executive director of the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP), the forerunner to the WSL. “The Coke that comes to mind is 1977’s. I asked for a day off school, begged my parents to let me go,” recalls Hardman. “I remember watching the best guys in the world warm up and free-surf out there. I remember being in awe of how good they all were.” That event was won by Anderson, whose family lived in a house overlooking Collaroy Beach. Inspired by the displays of surfing genius at his local beach and fuelled by his own prodigious talent and an unquenchable thirst for surfing and its lifestyle, Hardman became a champion of the waves, retiring at the turn of the century in his mid-30s having amassed 19 pro wins and two ASP world championships (1987/88 and 1991). “I loved surfing – that was my motivation,” Hardman says. “That’s the most important thing: you’ve got to love what you do.” As for how much surfing has evolved during his lifetime, Hardman says a more interesting topic is the extent to which it hasn’t changed. “The thing that people appreciate that never goes out of fashion is good, powerful rail surfing, doing big top turns and big carves on big waves,” he says. “Yes, surfing has evolved. I think the equipment has allowed them to surf faster, and they surf more in the air now. But if you watch guys in good six-foot waves and it’s breaking for a couple of hundred metres, essentially the best guys are the guys who are traditional, hardcore power surfers.” 20 MAY 2023 The Local Voice Since 1991
to North Narrabeen These days, Hardman most enjoys watching the ageless GOAT Kelly Slater (whom Hardman surfed against for more than a decade) and the three-time world champion Gabriel Medina – “the fiercest competitor I’ve seen in any generation”. Visit Hardman’s shop and you might be served by the amiable Dylan Moffat, who’s favoured to go deep at the Sydney Surf Pro. A highly regarded 23-yearold who missed qualifying for RISING STAR: Local talent Dylan Moffat will be in the line-up. PHOTOS: WSL this year’s CT by one place, Moffat competed as an injury replacement at the tour event at Bells Beach in early April and prevailed in a heat with world-title contender Joao Chianca. Having grown up three blocks from Northy, he’s chuffed about the venue for this month’s action. “It’s nice being able to sleep in your own bed and going down to a beach where you’re comfortable with the different breaks,” says Moffat, a graduate of Matt Grainger’s Manly Surf School. “It’s a beach break at the end of the day. It changes a lot and has a bunch of different faces, but it’s where I feel most comfortable in the world.” Moffatt says he’s hoping for “classic North Narrabeen [conditions], which would be 4-6 foot, northwest wind, east swell and just nice, long [waves] running left”. In his quest to qualify for next year’s CT, Moffat says he’s constantly buoyed by the support of his community. “Working at the surf shop still [he started there aged 15] where all these familiar faces come in and ask how you’re going… it’s a loving community and you always feel supported even when you’re on the road and away for a while. It’s the best environment to come back to.” Also competing on the men’s side at North Narrabeen will be Joel Vaughan (North Shelly) and George Pittar (North Manly). On the women’s side, there’ll be a strong Australian contingent, though no Northern Beaches local. There’s a symmetry to Moffat working under Hardman, “picking his brain” when he gets the chance. It’s a case of a surfing giant helping a young man who would one day be so. – Daniel Williams News The Local Voice Since 1991 MAY 2023 21
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Pittwater Life May 2023 Issue

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