The 1997 non-rated Super Skins contest was held a week after the Rip Curl Pro, in A-grade six-foot Bells Beach surf. I still don't quite understand the Skins format—suffice it to say that it was a golf-world import and never caught on, thank God. I do know that, in a single day, Skins winner Mark Occhilupo set a Bells power-surfing standard that 18 years later has yet to be matched, as he ran off 11 straight heat wins and earned $55,000 plus a new car. (Matt Hoy got $20,000 for taking the Rip Curl Pro.) Had Occy vaporized after his final win and been transported to Heaven in a sparkling mist, no one on the beach would have batted an eye.

Tim Baker covered the Skins for SURFER . . . . 

Never have I heard competitors make so much noise during an event, stomping their feet and cheering and yelling like a bunch of crazed football fans. The excitement was in no small part due to the timeless and inspired lines of Mark Occhilupo as he rekindled his love affair with the user-friendly contours of the Bells bowl. Occy faded heavily into each bottom turn, drove up the face beyond vertical, snapped through or under the lip, and drove back down, almost crossing his own track in a series of devastating figure-eights.

"He's mental!" Barton Lynch howled after one of Occ's early 10-point rides.

"Just give it to him!" bawled Hoyo. "Let's go home!"

In most cases, Occy would leave the water before the heat was over, saunter up the beach, acknowledge the wild cheers from the gallery, then sit and wait for his opponent to try and better his score while refueling on chocolate bars and water.

Proceedings only became interesting when Kelly Slater and Occy drew each other. Occ got a 9.3 and Kelly couldn't better it, registering his frustration by throwing his boards down noisily as he returned to the competitors' stand. To console himself, Kelly paddled out at the notorious Winkipop button with Tom Carroll to try and surf a suicidal left breaking onto bare rock. Kelly went over the falls, snapped his board and had to be picked up by the surf rescue boat.

I scurried down for a surf after the contest finished and bumped into Occy walking back up to the car park, grinning quietly to himself. "Hey, you couldn't lend us some money, could ya?" I asked, by way of a rather poor joke.

He looked at me blankly. "You going surfing?" he said.

Occ nodded. "You don't need money out there," he said, and walked up the stairs.

MARK OCCHILUPO: ZEUS OF BELLS

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