© Pam Rittelmeyer
New Kid on the Block: Part Two
Sep 20 2006 / Trestles, CA
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The surprise in the Boost Mobile Pro Tour was left for the second semifinal, where one Australian with a name like a Hobbit – Taj Burrow – met another Australian with a name like a sound effect—Bede Durbidge
Burrow was and still is second in the ratings for a reason. He is a redhot surfer with exceptional small wave skills who has been the Next Big Thing going back to when he was featured in Step Into Liquid. Burrow has been a known quantity for a few years but according to the www.ASPWorldTour.com website, Bede Durbidge was born in 1983 in Brisbane, which is kind of like being born in Riverside. He is 5’ 9 and 180 pounds which makes him a little bigger than the norm. His nicknames are Durbo or The White Fijian and his heroes are Kelly, Andy and Parko, two of whom had already been dispatched.
The White Fijian must be a local at some long, wind-blown wave in Australia because his first wave in the second semi was four big turns off a windy peak - very fast and solid and slidy. The judges liked him and gave him a 7.33. Taj followed that by carving the guts out of a long right and finishing with a giant tail slide in the closeout, but no recovery.
By the end of the heat, they were calling Bede the Giant Killer, because he had a giant lead over Taj: with a 7.33 and a 6.67 Taj needed a 14+ with less than two minutes to go. He got a 5 which cut his need down to an 8.83. He went for a big air just before the buzzer, didn’t make it, and Bede had three scalps with one huge one to go.
In between the second semi and the final, there was an Expression Session to allow Durbidge to rest up and Slater to psyche up. They sent out about a dozen pros to compete for Best Aerial and Longest Ride, and among those guys were quadriplegic surfer Jessie Billauer of Life Rolls On, and also Richie Lovett, an ASP pro who was recovering from cancer treatments.
There was much flinging and zapping and it was all a pause before the meeting of the Giant with the Giant Killer. In the Media area of the scaffold, one of the original Thunder Lizards, Ian Cairns, had been diligently videoing heats all day. He got up during the Expression Session and when someone realized he was leaving before the final, they asked why. Kanga said: “Because I already know what is going to happen.”
And so did everyone else. It would almost take an asteroid to knock Slater out of a final at Lowers, especially against a guy few had ever heard of. So Slater was the lion and Bede was the Christian as the heat began – or so everyone thought.
Slater got a wave right at the start, stumbled on the first turn but made it through to the end, while Bede got a nice set wave but blew his first turn and fell. Nerves.
Durbidge's dream come true...a congratulatory hug from his hero Kelly Slater.
Slater got a 3.67 on his first wave and Durbidge got a .93.
The ocean chose the final of the event to take a nap, which wasn’t cool, and neither surfer really got to shine through a slow start.
Neither surfer had a wave over 4.0 until Slater got a medium-sized wave, went 0 to 60 in two seconds, did a turn and then a 360, kept going, milked it to the end and finished with a tail slide. With almost anyone else, riding a wave that small like that would be groveling, but Slater makes it look natural. He got a 6.67 which gave him a total of 3.67, 2.33, 1.4 and 6.67 to Burbidge’s .93 and 2.5.
With 18 minutes left, Durbidge got a great little right and thwacked and cracked it to the beach with no mistakes. On the webcast, Pat O’Connell said, “This guy has no nerves. He did that perfectly.” Out the back, Slater got a similar wave, but turned too hard and fell. And that was how the rest of the heat went.
Durbidge got an 8.5 for that wave, which put Slater in a hole he could not fling himself out of. With 16:57 Slater needed only a 4.34 to take back the lead and everyone knew he could do that going fin-first and switchfoot. Durbidge got a 4.03 to improve his second wave and put Slater 5.87 in the hole. Then Bede got an even better second wave - a 7.33 - and put Slater seriously in the hole, needing a 9.16 in an ocean that wasn’t cooperating.
Slater loves to do the impossible but what he did next seemed impossible to all his many fans and admirers. He glitched. He fell. A bunch of times.
With 10 minutes left, Slater took off on a series of lackluster waves that would have needed something huge to make a score. Slater threw huge turns, slid his tail and didn’t make any of them to score .5, 1.13, 1.07 and .83.
Some people thought Slater might be throwing the heat, knowing that he needed the points more than the money and knowing that Slater might be sympathetic to a young pro who could use the $14,000 difference between $30,000 for first and $16,000 for second. But that idea was shot down by people who know Slater is a humanitarian, but not THAT much of a humanitarian.
With four minutes left, Burdridge seemed to make a tactical mistake when he let Slater go on a wave, and Those Who Knew thought back only one year to the final of the 2005 Boost Mobile Pro, when Phil McDonald, with priority, let Slater go on a wave knowing Slater needed an 8.67: “With three minutes to go I was just praying that the ocean would go flat,” MacDonald was quoted after the event last year. “And then a wave came through that didn’t look even remotely like an 8.5 so I didn’t even budge. Kelly went it and him being him… well he turned it into the score he needed.”
Slater scored a 9.07 to take the final in the last few minutes and left a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of Aussie 20-somethings.
As the clock was ticking down, that taste was being washed away with cold Foster’s and the hard to believe scenario that Durbidge was going to take down Slater, too.
Things began to rumble in the competitor’s area as the clock ticked down.
Right at the end, Slater got a decent wave, ripped it to the end and kicked out to applause, but that was that. Slater bellyboarded over to Durbidge, who stood out in the shallow water, staring up at these thousands of people cheering at him. Slater shook his hand and hugged him and when they both got mobbed on the beach, Slater found a cold can of Fosters and was one of the first to douse the Giant Killer.
A contingent of Aussie 20-somethings carried their hero up the beach, but it was a hard go at first because Durbige is like an Aussie Rules player compared to some of his mates. But they got him there, where he called someone on his cell phone – most likely his girl – and just soaked it all in.
Up on the scaffold immediately after, they brought out Slater first: “Bede had the whole competitor’s tent behind him and crowd supporting me and it’s been a great week. I’m just having fun. I love surfing and competing and traveling to my friends around the world and keep it going for a while.”
Slater got $16,000 for second. The check girl got a nice kiss.
Then they brought out the White Fijian who made a speech that was almost completely obliterated by a passing Amtrak train. He looked like he was in shock and the $30 Giant Clams didn’t hurt either, because that’s like a hundred thousand in Australia, or something.
And that was that. Bede Durbidge goes into the history books. Tom Carroll once said that once he started winning, he started winning a lot because he understood all that it took to win. Durbidge now understands. His first name is pronounced like “bead” and let’s just hope the history books spell his last name correctly.
For more information on the Association of Surfing Professionals, check out their thoroughly modern website at www.aspworldtour.com
To see a repeat webcast of the final between Durbidge and Slater, go to:
And please buy products from Boost Mobile, Hurley and Fosters, because they did a nice job putting this all on.
To read Part One of this story click here.
