People who love surfing very often think that professionals live like a dream: they travel the world, ride the best waves on the planet, and get money for it.
It sounds cool, but as it usually happens, there is a flip side to the medal, and if you look at it carefully, you will want to fight for the champion title much less.
Firstly, it isn’t easy to become a pro-surfer in principle, and secondly, their life, it turns out, is not sugar.
Recently I read the text of David Reilly, a surf journalist who has spent his whole life in the circle of professional surfers; in a note, he just talked about the complexities of their life.If you systematize his reasoning and stories, it turns out this is.
Table of Contents
Messy connections quickly get boring.
Yes, while the average man has two dozen partners in his life, a professional surfer gains the same number in a week of some subsequent stage of the competition.
But the matter is not in quantity but quality. Surprisingly enough, many pro surfers get married at a reasonably young age.
When the choice is practically unlimited, and there is no stage of “hunting,” the zest disappears, and sex without emotions is a dubious pleasure.
Obligation kills the high.
How does a regular surfer’s gurney go? First, you swim for a couple of hours, you have fun chatting with friends on the lineup, you take waves, sometimes you fall, but you enjoy every ride.
Half of life is spent on an airplane.
Airplane magazines and smiling flight attendants offering wine in micro-bottles, changing faces and airports, shining shops for expensive watches and almost the same expensive magnets, a view from the window, and old films with Chinese subtitles – all this causes pleasant excitement when you fly on vacation for a couple once a year.
And when you are a pro surfer, it happens that you need to visit three countries in a week, and the road to the steepest waves on tiny islands in the ocean requires three or four transfers each time.
You are constantly in the spotlight.
The most discreet ones ask for an autograph or a photo, while others can be impossible to get rid of.
Strangers pester with uninteresting conversations, constantly offer to drink or throw something; not the prettiest girls beg for a kiss. Every pro surfer dreams of a double!
Life story
In 2013, one WSL Oakley Pro Keramas took place in Bali. I didn’t go up to Slater and ask for a photo, although he was standing a meter away from me; I felt so sorry for him, finally resting, why pull him.
Getting rich is almost impossible.
Yes, Kelly Slater, John-John Florence, Medina, and Fanning are making big surfing fortunes. But this is the very top of the ranking.
After five years of competition, they return to their hometown with broken dreams and start collecting Kickstarter money to open another surf school.
Often on the verge of death
The rating system in competitions is such that the larger the wave, the more points.
So the chances of hitting bottom are more than great, but it can end sadly: in 2016, for example, Owen Wright received a severe concussion on the Pipeline, after which he spent several months in the hospital.
At the same time, pro surfers have the following choice: give up a career or climb a Tiahupa ten feet.
You have to pay for everything.
And even if you pulled out a lucky ticket in this life and reached the top of the ranking, unfortunately, it will come back to haunt the rest.
Friends will not be yours but the champion. Girls too. “Are they interested in me?” – it turns out that this question is asked by the pros at least as often as Rockefeller.
Moreover, many of them do not even stand on ceremony; you are rich, what do you feel sorry for?
Probably, not everything is so wrong.
And yes, the most capable get all the juice of victories, world fame, and a lot of money.
But, whether it’s worth it or not – everyone decides for himself, you don’t have to harbor illusions: “Everything has its price.”
