Tim Baker's profile on Shane Herring ran in the August 1992 issue of Australia's Surfing Life. This version has been slightly edited.

Legendary Dee Why surf photographer Peter Crawford was frantic. "Where's Shane? Twenty of the Dee Why boys are downstairs and they won't let 'em in," he reported. It was 10:00 pm on the Sunday of Shane Herring's historic Coke Classic win and the Dee Why lad was being toasted by pro surfing's elite at the swank North Sydney nightclub Metropolis.

He'd had to leave his mates behind at the Dee Why RSL after a wild afternoon of celebrations to attend the official Coke presentation. The Dee Why crew wouldn't normally frequent a yuppie venue like Metropolis but—mates being mates—they wanted to share in their boy Shane's moment of glory.

What would Herring do? Abandon the lads so he could continue lapping up the intoxicating attention of famous pros and glamorous women?

After some swift negotiations with management, it was agreed that the Dee Why crew would be allowed in after 10:30, when the official presentation was over. To his undying credit, Herring at that point bailed with the boys to down a few ales at a more modest inn around the corner until they could all rejoin the festivities at Metropolis together.

"Your mates are always there and other people aren't—they're just there for the glory—they just bail when you don't win a contest," Shane explained wisely the next day, despite a frightening hangover. "They're not there for the duration—you're mates are always there."

Shane Herring, 20, lives in a small two-bedroom flat with his mum and younger brother Brett, also a hot surfer. Brett and Shane share a bedroom that resembles thousands of other grommet bedrooms around the country—skateboards on the floor, surfing and band posters on the wall. The boards sit out in the hall 'cause there's no room for them in the bedroom.

"It doesn't even feel like I've won the Coke Classic. I'm still here, in Dee Why," Shane says, still a little perplexed by all the fuss and attention.

He's already apportioned a large chunk of his $33,333 Coke check to help pay his mum's medical bills. She recently had a brain tumor removed. "She's alright now," Shane says. "No hair though."

He plays down the issue, but there's no denying his mum's newly improved health had a lot to do with his win. Terry Day, Herring's trainer for the past six years, says Shane's mind simply wasn't on the job early in the season while his mother was sick. "He had the weight on his shoulders, looking after a sick mother and a young brother that's not at school and doesn't have a job. He's had a huge burden," Terry says.

One of the older blokes from down the beach is hand-delivering a letter of congratulations.

"You have done the entire Dee Why Surfing Fraternity proud," the letter reads. Shane's genuinely touched and apologetic that he has to excuse himself. "I'm in the middle of an interview," he explains, begging his mate's understanding.

Dee Why is a close-knit community, brought together by the derision and scorn of the surrounding suburbs, almost all of which are more fashionable.

"They think Dee Why is a drug capital or a scumbag place or something," Shane says. "It's nothing like that. All the young guys coming up through these days are clean. You go out and have a drink once in a while. They know what to do, not too many lose it." Still, it is a long time since Dee Why has produced a champion surfer.

It's clear I'm talking to a man still in shock. Barely 24 hours ago he emerged from the junky Narrabeen surf, having just beaten the universally worshipped Kelly Slater in the Coke final, and was mobbed on the beach by his mates and TV crews. "It's all a blur, it was radical," Shane tells me. "Someone put a beer in my hand and I didn't even drink it. I just looked at it and gave it to someone else. I was running up the beach and there were people everywhere. It was incredible, the most incredible thing ever."

Then the presentation, the huge check, which he accepted with a wild roar into the microphone as his mates chanted "R-E, R-E, R-E," in anticipation of the drinking session that awaited at their beloved Dee Why RSL.

"I got so emotional when I saw him up there," says Terry Day. "He was like an excited little kid at the zoo or something, just jumping up and down."

Shane's hangover has been aggravated today by near-constant media inquiries. Still, he seems to be relishing the opportunity to espouse a bit of Herring philosophy to a suddenly attentive surfing world. There are no bold claims, but it's obvious Shane's rise will help open up a new era in performance surfing. Tales of Herring's free-surfing ability are legend and if he starts regularly producing some of those freakish free-surfing moves in competition a lot of surfers are in danger of being left behind.

"I go surfing out at Dee Why and the wind's nor-east and it's unreal. You get a little chop on the waves and it's filthy for doing radical maneuvers. With the cross chop, you get these lips coming towards you and just hit it and because the wind's coming that way you can stay up in the air, your board stays on your feet. Not bunny hops, but full-on aerials."

Do any free surfing highlights stand out, moments when he pulled off something that totally blew him away?

"I did this cutback once," he says, cracking himself up at how silly the statement sounds. "No, I did. Racing as fast as I could go and came off the bottom and then hit the lip and went from the lip all the way to the bottom of the wave in a big arc and then swung around." He pauses, realizing the anecdote seems a little anti-climactic. "I love doing those full rails carves," he explains. "I don't know, it just felt really, really precise. Like when your whole body movement is perfect. No wiggling it or anything! When your legs are perfect. When you go for a surf and it feels like your timing's just perfect."

But of course the surfing world, particularly the legions of frothing grommet, are hungering for new moves. Does Herring have any as yet unveiled innovations to unleash on the sport? "No, that's Kelly's, not me," Shane says with a chuckle. "Kelly's the one who makes them all up."

Trainer Terry Day reckons the world doesn't yet realize how good a surfer Herring is. "I've seen him do bizarre things. Ever been on that ride up here at Seaworld, the Twister? He can do a maneuver like that on his backhand, where he just missiles his body," he says, miming with his hands a kind of backhand aerial that incorporates a full, spiral twist. "He has an incredible ability to visualize himself doing bizarre things.” But will the judges even know how to score such surfing if Herring starts producing it in contests? "They'd better," Terry says menacingly. "I'll be up the stairs telling them how."

Furthermore, Day says, Herring's mop-haired freckle-faced appearance belies a deep-seated determination to succeed. "Being not the best-looking guy, he's got to make his mark somehow. He's freckled, he used to have red hair. The motivation is there to be someone. Shane's got a great goal—to house his family. They've done it really tough," Terry says.

At the height of the previous evening's partying I'd bumped into Herring in the crowd, as mayhem erupted all around us. "I want to put the personality back into surfing," he bellowed above the din in his drunken euphoria.

"Maybe we should do an interview!" I reply. "I'll give your agent a ring,"

"I haven't got an agent," he roared. "I'll never have no agent. Ring me!"

You can watch young pro surfers becoming hip or cultivating an image after they've been on the tour a couple of years. They acquire a few groovy turns of phrase, maybe a leather jacket and other fashionable clothes items from foreign ports, an earring or two and maybe even a few tatts. Herring is a rare case because his success has come so suddenly that he is still totally himself. "No way. I'll never change," Shane promised.

"SHANE HERRING: CAN A SURF STAR STAY THIS NORMAL?" BY TIM BAKER (1992)

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