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Fuelled by youthful zeal and blessed with what athletes commonly call a big tank, for a time Nathan could do it all. When the Hog was on, he was a force of nature to be reckoned with. A razor-sharp rail game, precise snap and affinity for the barrel underpinned his competitive act and he reached his CT peak in 2004 and 2005 where he finished 7th and 8th in the world respectively. Runner-up finishes at Teahupo’o, and J-Bay represented his competitive high-points. A dislocated shoulder in the first moments of the final at Teahupo’o in 2004 had prevented him from chasing victory against C.J. Hobgood.
When you factored in the generous performance incentives his sponsors paid, he estimates he was making around half a million a year in his prime. He owned the dream house on the Lake at Narrabeen, parked his tinny out the back and the latest BMW in the drive-way out the front. The Tour felt like a non-stop good time and Nathan literally lived high on the Hog.
However, a year after Nathan notched up his second consecutive year in the top 10, it all began to unravel. He admits that too often he found himself in the middle of an event, plotting his party schedule around the swell forecast. Sometimes he pulled it all off, but he also got caught out. “In 2006, I had a heat with Chris Ward at Mundaka. There wasn’t meant to be any waves. And then you know, everyone’s partied so hard that we must have drunk up the swell and there was little waves in the morning, and they’ve put the contest on and I’ve got to surf my heat, and I’m not feeling that good. I haven’t had much rest for the night. And Wardo ended up beating me and I lost a few other heats that year that were close.
As Nathan grew increasingly distracted by pro-surfing’s perks, his travel partner, Mick Fanning, was returning to competition with renewed focus, after what had threatened to be a career-ending hamstring injury. The connection between Mick and Nathan was tighter than a knot in a Waimea leggie string. Nathan is two years older and when Mick first won a pro junior, he remembers it was Nathan who enthusiastically opened his house and threw the party. They also shared a major sponsor in Rip Curl and travelled together extensively on and off the Tour. “We were laughing about one trip the other day,” reflects Mick over the phone. “Nathan had cut his head badly and we didn’t have any local anaesthetic on the boat, so I had to hold his hand while he got stitched up.”
Mick concedes that when they first hit the Tour in the early 2000s he and the other Australians were always on the hunt for a good time. “I think that’s just the way we were.” However, he stresses that surfing always came first and after Mick recovered from the hammy horror show, he was never going to take his pro- surfing opportunity for granted. It meant making some hard choices. “I tried to talk to him forever and just never found the right time. So I ended up just writing a letter and I left it in his bag… It basically said ‘I’m here if you need me but I’ve got to try and take a different route. I still love you mate, but yeah, I can’t travel with you anymore.’ He was sort of making decisions that were not aligned with where I wanted to go, but I wanted to support him, but it was sort of tough love.”
By the end of 2006 Nathan needed to win the Pipe Masters to requalify, a diabolical scenario for any surfer. When he wound up back on the QS the following year, he figured he’d re qualify easily and didn’t make any attempts to curb his flamboyant lifestyle. As it transpired, after winning a Prime event in Scotland, he only needed one more decent result to reclaim his slot on tour, but it never came.
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