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Beschen, Shane

Globe-trotting Australian surfer from Torquay, Victoria; cofounder in 1962 of the Bells Beach surf contest. Troy was born (1938) and raised in Torquay, and began surfing at age 10 on a 16-foot hollow paddleboard. He and four other members of the lifeguard-based Torquay Surf Club, using inflatable rubber rafts, became the first to ride the soon-to-be famous waves of Bells Beach in 1952. Four years later, at an international lifeguard competition held in conjunction with the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Troy and the rest of the local surfers watched American surfer/lifeguards Greg Noll and Tommy Zahn, among others, ride their Malibu chips at Torquay Beach in ways that instantly made Australia's paddleboard "toothpicks" obsolete.

Troy helped launch the Bells Beach Boardriders Club in 1958; in 1962 Troy and clubmate Vic Tantau planned and hosted the inaugural Bells Beach surfing contest, which evolved in 1973 into the Rip Curl Pro—Australia's first and longest-running professional surf contest.

Troy attended Geelong College, then worked as an accountant and screened American-made surf movies in Melbourne; in mid-1963 he set off on a four-year surfing sojourn that took him to Great Britain (where he introduced the sport to the English Channel Islands), Italy, Spain, Morocco, France (where he placed first in the debut European Surfing Championships), the Canary Islands, the Virgin Islands, mainland America, and Hawaii.

Moving on to South America, Troy made the finals of the 1964 Peru International; later that year, after arriving in Rio de Janeiro by train, Troy borrowed a surfboard from a local 

, demonstrated how waves were being ridden at that time in places like Sydney and Los Angeles, and thus gave a huge shot of energy to the still-young Brazilian surf scene. Troy's performances earned him an introduction to the Brazilian president. Roaming through distant lands with a surfboard at that time was unusual; "like traveling the world carrying a grand piano," Troy later said. "Everybody wanted to know you. Everybody was nice to you."

Good luck followed the lanky blond-haired, blue-eyed Australian as he moved on to Argentina, where he was feted by the rich and beautiful, and flown from town to town in a government-provided DC3 plane. After returning to Peru to compete for the Australian team in the 1965 World Surfing Championships, Troy crossed the Panama Canal on a timber freighter, traversed the Atlantic and the Greenland Sea, and visited the Spitsbergen Islands, 600 miles from the North Pole. Dropping down through Europe into Africa, he passed through the Middle East (gaining a black "ejection" passport stamp in Syria on drug-smuggling charges), joined an anthropological expedition in Angola, walked 200 miles across the Kalahari Desert, and landed in South Africa in mid-1966, where he rode the newly discovered waves at Jeffreys Bay.

Taking an arcing northeast route back to Australia, Troy visited Mauritius, without a surfboard, and watched flawless eight-foot waves pass by unridden at Tamarin Bay. Three years later, he returned to Tamarin with Torquay surfing phenomenon Wayne Lynch and filmmaker Paul Witzig to shoot footage for Witzig's 1971 movie 

. In the mid-'70s, Troy spent much of his time in Bali and Java, and in 1975 he was one of the first surfers to ride the spectacular right-breaking tubes of Lagundri Bay, Nias.

In the late '60s and early '70s, Troy and his parents owned and operated a motel at Noosa Heads, Queensland; in 1974 he was co-owner of a Sydney theater that screened only surf movies; in the early '90s he owned a Queensland surf shop.

 magazine profile, Troy said that he'd visited 130 countries, including 38 in Africa alone. He was named one of "Australia's 50 Most Influential Surfers" by 

 magazine in 1992; in 2002 he was inducted into the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame; in 2007 he was Medal of Order of Australia for his service to surfing.

Troy died suddenly, while at home in Queensland, in 2008, of a blood clot on the lung. He was 69.

 a book of Troy's letters and journal entries from his travels, was published in 2010

Troy, Peter

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

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The Sunday Joint