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What Do The Greatest Moments At Pipe Have in Common?

Size matters.

At the tip of your head what are the best Pipe moments that you can remember? How about Joey Buran winning in 1984 and coming out of the thickest biggest barrel and doing that all over body-shake in the spit? What about Martin Potter’s legendary 15-foot set that he took from Derek Ho and rode in the history books? There was the snap that was heard around the world b Tom Carroll and there was the Mike Ho performance, surfing in a cast with a broken wrist. How about the Kelly- Machado high five? Great moments out of thousand from all the Pipe Masters championships we have enjoyed over the years.

What do all those classic moments have in common?

Big, powerful Pipe conditions. The type that dislocates shoulders, that sends people in to grab their back-up boards or to grab a lift to the hospital. The type of waves that make the beach shake on sets, that make it impossible to know for sure of someone is actually going to go on the next set, or if a group of the best surfers in the world are going to look at the west set stacking up and decide that it just looks too dangerous to go.

No one really remembers the time Bede won the Pipe Masters. For the record, he won surfing small rights and doing some close out reos at the end of the Backdoor section. No one really recalls when Robbie Page won Pipe either. In fact it was that year, 1988, that the penny dropped on so many surfing fans that the Pipe Masters was not always going to be a death-defying festival of the best surfers in the world standing tall in the most dangerous barrel in the world. That contest was shown around the world, on TV and in movie houses, and it was just a beach-break tap-out. Three – to the beach (or was it four back then?) and it was almost like a ‘what the fuck?’ moment when contest waiting periods and event structures and results seemed more important than giant west swells.

Hawaii, and Pipeline in particular, have one incredible advantage over the rest of the event venues around the world in that it is big, in your face and it makes the drama of surfing comprehensible to the mainstream.

Remembering that the majority of these mainstream viewers have no idea what a waiting period is, let alone a priority system. Hawaii has that ability to almost dumb it down to very impressive visuals burning into receptive eyeballs.  

This year however, it looks set to be one of those less impressive years. It looks set to be more of a Bede / Pagey year than a Carroll / Slater year. It looks like there are going to be some good moments coming out of the event, but there aren’t going to be a series of stacked-up death swells approaching the North Shore – the type of swells that keep people awake all night and have certain surfers stressing their heads off at first light.

I remember one year at the Pipe Masters the swell had grown incredibly during the day, and there was a literal beehive of activity across at the Oakley house as surfers like Dustin Barca smiled and quietly went about swapping his equipment out and changing fins, quietly getting prepped for what was starting to look like something monstrous out there. It was one of those years that there was a big trials event before the main event and some QS hopefuls needed to surf, and get through a few heats, to do what was necessary for the following year, whether it was a better seeding or a possible CT placement.

One surfer wanted nothing to do with it. He wasn't Hawaiian and he didn't have the experience and he was faced with a situation that was out of his control and made him feel totally out of depth.

“I am not fuck paddling out there,” he said to no–one in general, but we all heard it, and it was at that moment that I realised that not every one is deserving of a run on the Championship Tour. No shame, or embarrassment, it was just a brief moment when the penny dropped and I realised the hunger and determination, the high risks and the hard work needed in order to succeed at one of the most dangerous and demanding professional sports in the world.

After the next heat the event was called off for the day as giant sets started washing through from the west and sweeping down the beach. His heat was called off, and everyone was quite relieved.

The following year that surfer had a great marketing job for one of the brands in the surf industry.    

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