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angle

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Bermuda

Small, elite, mobile professional surf event, held from 1995 to 1998, designed as an alternative to the often-bloated world championship tour contests. The Billabong Challenge was conceived and planned by Billabong founder Gordon Merchant, filmmaker Jack McCoy, and former world tour champion Wayne Bartholomew. "Gordon," McCoy explained to 

 magazine, "is tired of seeing great surfers competing in funky surf [on the ASP tour], and it was his vision to put on a contest allowing the best surfers to perform in perfect waves." McCoy later added that the Challenge was also a way to get Billabong team rider Mark Occhilupo, who'd just emerged from a long period of depression and weight-gain, back in the public eye.

The debut Billabong Challenge was held at a "mystery left" (later revealed as Gnaraloo) in Western Australia. Kelly Slater, Rob Machado, Johnny-Boy Gomes, Brenden Margieson, Sunny Garcia, Luke Egan, Shane Powell and Mark Occhilupo made up the eight-man starting field. (Tom Curren, Martin Potter and Tom Carroll were invited, but declined; Luke Egan hurt his knee during a warmup surf and was replaced by Paul Paterson.) Although a two-week waiting period was set up, the entire contest event was formatted to last just five hours: two 90-minute prelim heats, a half-hour break, and a 90-minute final. Surfers, judges and a small film crew all camped out in tents overlooking the break.

Wind and rain plagued the first 10 days of the event. Day 11 was clear and beautiful, with slightly overhead surf peeling down the reef, but contest director Barthlomew played a waiting game right up until Day 14—the final opportunity—and was rewarded with stunning double-overhead tubes. In the final, Rob Machado edged past reigning world champion Kelly Slater, earning $20,000 for the win.

Just a few weeks later, the second Billabong Challenge was held, at Jeffreys Bay. Again, the event ran on the final day of the waiting period, in dramatic eight-foot surf. Kelly Slater was masterful in taking the win, but runner-up Occhilupo made it clear that he was indeed ready to return to the world stage. These first two editions of the Billabong Challenge, as SURFER editor Steve Hawk noted, "set a standard for epic surf, innovative formats and unprecedented performances."

The 1996 event, also at Gnaraloo, ran out of time before the final was held. Surf for the 1997 contest, in Sumatra, was small, and the event was called off. In 1998, Shane Dorian beat Sunny Garcia to win the final Billabong Challenge, held mostly in testing quadruple-overhead surf at a Sunset-like break called Terrors in South Coast New South Wales.

The Billabong Challenge, McCoy's documentary on the debut event, won

 Video of the Year, as well as Best Editing, in the 1996 SURFER Magazine Video Awards. Each of the subsequent Challenge events was followed a few months later by its own video.


1. Rob Machado
2. Kelly Slater
3. Johnny-Boy Gomes
4. Mark Occhilupo


1. Kelly Slater
2. Mark Occhilupo
3. Warren Dean
4. Brenden Marieson


Finalists; event not completed: Mark Occhilupo, Rob Machado, Luke Egan, Kalani Robb


Invitees; event not completed: Kelly Slater, Luke Egan, Shane Dorian, Taylor Knox, Mark Occhilupo, Pancho Sullivan, Kalani Robb


1. Shane Dorian
2. Sunny Garcia
3. Luke Egan
4. Taylor Knox

Billabong Challenge

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