Derek Rielly's interview with Shane Beschen, "The Young Man and the Sea," ran in the September 1997 issue of Australia's Surfing Life. Beschen was 25.

Yeah. I don’t know. For me, what matters is just busting out in the water. I’d hate to be known as one of the guys who’s always talking shit and never performing. I just do it in the water. Sometimes you get carried away at contests, and you might cause a scene because you lose a heat or something. That just means you’re putting a lot into it. But basically, yeah, I am a competitive person.

You’re one of the few guys worth hanging around to watch at a contest. Do you like to entertain?

Yeah! For sure! I mean, as my career moves along that’s become a really important part of what I want to bring to surfing. Like, if I’m not going to win the world title I want to at least put on good performances in my heats. Just for myself and for the fans. My main motivation has always been to do the rad shit in contests, to do radical things in high-pressure situations. Anyone can bust out in their home beachbreak when nobody is watching. But when everyone’s watching? That's totally different. To me, the most important thing is to perform. Even when I win, if I don’t feel I surfed good, I’m bummed that I didn’t put on a good performance. It goes the other way, too. At Narrabeen this year, for instance, I lost to Simon Law really early. That’s fucked for me. But later I had so many people come up and say "That was such a rad air. Fuck, that was hot." It makes it easier to lose when you hear that.

Your style really smoothed out a lot over the last year. Was it a conscious effort to calm things down?

Yeah! I’m still working on it, on how I present myself on a wave. I’m actually having more fun now because my control is so much better than it used to be, and I can go for more radical moves now and feel like I’ve got a good chance at making them.

I've been watching your backhand tuberiding and you actually seem to pump up and down using your hand as a sort of lever. What’s happening there?

(Disbelieving laughter) Yeeeeeaaaaahhh! I just went to Tavarua and had a couple of waves where I started to do that, and it fully works!

What do you do, just grab your rail and pull up and down?

Well . . . yeah! (Laughing) Basically, yeah! There’s definitely a pulling up with your hand. You can’t use your ankles backside, you know? When you're riding frontside, you can stall with your back arm, and when you get too deep you just pull your arm out of the wave and lift with the ankles. Whereas backsiders, once you get too deep, you have to pull with your hand on the rail. Most of the time you’re not standing in the barrel and you’re not pumping in the barrel backside—very few guys do that. The waves have to be really big to stand in the barrel backside. But, yeah, what you're talking about, it’s basically another way to pump. If you pump high as you’re coming down you’re gaining speed and then you pull high again. You can’t go too high though.

I’ve been working a lot on airs. A real lot. Maybe too much. But it's just so intriguing to me. I’ve learned to do the basic airs, and now I’m really learning to do backside airs all over again. I’m addicted to the feeling. Like, a backside transfer where you’re not doing a reverse, you’re just sustaining the line, and landing, and hitting the transition on the wave, that’s something I’ve been working on. It’s an incredible feeling when you do it right—you actually gain speed. I have a wave on video where I do a backside transfer and come down perfectly into a bottom turn and do three more snaps. If you do it right it’s a fully functional manoeuver that gets you more speed.

You’re flying! Boom! Right back into your bottom turn. I love doing aerials. It’s like tuberiding. Time is suspended when you’re doing an air, just like when you’re in the tube.

In Japan I did my first full rotation. I didn’t make it but it was crazy! It was frontside and the waves were four-foot beachbreak, and usually when you do a frontside rotation you land it tail first and then you’re spinning it the rest of the way, but this one I did a full rotation and landed nose first. That’s fully possible.

Reckon the judges appreciate these kinds of moves?

No. They have no comprehension of the difficulty or the technique. Absolutely no comprehension. A snap is a snap to them. A floater is a floater. Airs, they don't understand. Actually, this year in Japan it seemed like they started to score me better. I got a 6.5 for an air, and it was the only thing I did on the wave. And that’s a huge score for one move. So maybe they're slowly starting to reward it.

The deep dark secret of pro surfing is that tuberiding is way easier than pulling airs.

Yeah! Totally! There’s a lot of technique involved in doing airs. But aside from airs, it's other stuff too. Like judges don’t understand the length of time the rail’s in the water during the snap. That really matters, you know? Some guy might come up and do a nice hack, but another guy will come up in the same tight spot and hold it longer, keep the rail in longer, and that's a better turn if you know what to look for. It’s easy to see but hard to explain. That’s the problem with surfing contests, really. There’s so much opinion involved.

You’re one of the few competitors who can give it to Slater.

Fuck, he just beat me in Japan. I’m so bummed. I had a little karma on me though. [O'Neill, Beschen's wetsuit sponsor, had just published an ad with the quote: “The next time I have him in a heat it’s going to be ALL OUT."] Never give Slater any extra motivation to beat you. The guy’s fucked up as it is.

Yeah, but I’m not really his rival. He’s, like, Slater, and I’m Beschen.

Yeah! It’s weird, huh? That’s strange. I’ve known that for a long time, and I always thought it was a little weird.

How do you feel about the US Open thing now? [Slater scored a tactical win off Beschen in the 1996 US Open, forcing an interference call on Shane in the opening exchange; Beschen, immediately afterwards, was furious.]

I’m over it. Time heals almost all wounds.

Did it seem, to you, like Kelly was scared that someone could actually beat him?

Yeah! It’s definitely hurt him more than it helped. Not that it even really matters. He still goes out and rips and wins everything in sight. He’s a greedy motherfucker though.

Performance surfing needs to go to expression sessions with $10,000 for the winner, $7,000 for 2nd, and on down. Slater will surf in those, too. Like a Backdoor Shootout kind of thing, but at Sebastian Inlet. Freaks would show up and do the most mind-blowing stuff you’ve ever seen. There’d be 30, 40, 50 guys busting fucking crazy shit. My brother [Gavin Beschen], for instance. He blows doors on most pro guys, but he’ll never go on tour because he watches me and hears the stories and sees the fucking judging, and he knows it’s a joke.

It’s a fucking joke. Two years ago I won this expression session in France with an air to 180, air to reverse, whatever you call it. It was 45 minutes where everyone in the lineup was just busting and falling and eating shit but totally going for it, and the crowd was roaring the whole time. Then right after that Victor Ribas and Todd Holland paddle out for the final and the crowd was silent. It was gnarly! Surfing needs more of the crazy shit. If the judges would just say, "We’ll give you an eight if you go down the line and do something crazy," I would go down the line and do something nuts on every wave. And hopefully everyone else would too. People would love it.

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Interviews

Features

The Sunday Joint

Videos