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Bermuda

Pro surfer from Christchurch, New Zealand; five-time national champion from 1983 to 1987; later a surfboard shaper and competition judge, as well as the New Zealand national team coach.

Buchanan was born (1961) and raised in Christchurch, the son of school teacher parents, and began surfing in 1972. It was pretty bloody cold" in winter, Buchanan later recalled. "We used to go to the dive shop and buy sheets of rubber and make our own booties and gloves. We'd wear rugby jerseys in the water and think they were keeping us warmer. It was tough."

At 16 he dropped out of school himself and moved to Sydney, Australia, then spent a year in South Australia, "dole-bludging" (drawing unemployment) and surfing.

Buchanan's five-year world tour career, launched in 1983, never really got off the ground (he managed a pair of quarterfinal appearances in 1984 and finished the year at #36), but in his home country he was virtually unbeatable, and the national titles came one after the other. Buchanan's five-straight national titles equaled the Wayne Parkes' run from '66 to '70.

In 1981, after a surf-factory apprenticeship in which he did a little of everything involved with boardmaking, Buchanan began shaping for Hot Buttered—a job he held for nearly a decade. It was early on during this period that Buchanan picked up the nickname Ratso—"because I always had long hair."

From 1990 to 2000, Buchanan coached the New Zealand national amateur team, which, during this period, competed in six world contests. Buchanan went on to become a WCT contest judge; he served as the head judge for European world tour events, and later became the head priority judge—responsible for determining which competing surfer, at any given moment, has right-of-way for the next good wave.

In 1999, not long after moving back to New Zealand for good, Buchanan opened Lion Rock Surf Shop, in the popular black-sand coastal village of Piha, west of Auckland.

Unexpectedly, Buchanan took top honors in the Grand Masters division at the 2011 Supersurf World Masters Championships, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; on the final day of competition he beat former world tour heavyweights Shaun Tomson and Glen Winton, on his way to taking out Wayne Bartholomew in the final.

Buchanan was elected to the Surfing New Zealand Hall of Fame in 2001.

Buchanan, Iain

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

The Sunday Joint

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

The Sunday Joint

Videos