#Chayne Simposon

[leglesstv]

Pretty big: Chayne Simpson, World Champion 2020.

Australia has a newly crowned surfing world champion. On the 9th of March, Chayne Simpson, from Wollongong NSW, beat Californian Sam Coyne to win the World Kneeboard Surfing Championship in convincing fashion. The event went down in Dunedin, New Zealand, organised by the New Zealand Kneeboard Surfing Association. Conditions were varied throughout the event with the final surfed in small waves on a high tide that effectively saw competition reduced to a game of strategy and patience. This is particularly ironic: Chayne made the quarter finals of this event when he first entered in 1999 and has consistently placed high since. He’s been runner up a number of times, but never won. Always the bridesmaid, now at last, the bride.

Chayne’s been riding kneeboards since the age of about 15, when he was growing up on the NSW south coast. A mad bodyboarder at the time, he recalls trips after school with his brother Troy, and Mark Slater, whose dad Rob would ferry them around to surf the pick of the local breaks. With a healthy kneelo underground in the area it was inevitable that Chayne would see the possibilities offered by increased speed and turning power: it wasn’t long before Rob Slater had the boys on kneeboards and surfing regular club competitions with the Wollongong Area Kneeboard Association (WAKA).

This is amateur surfing, the kind where people turn up month after month, year after year, because they’re dedicated to their sport, not because there’s any financial gain down the track. It’s very fertile ground, but kneeboard comps are often more about a chance for the far flung and sometimes isolated kneeboard fraternity to catch up than winning. The bulk of the field tends to be pretty flat, but the top level are as far beyond the ability of the average kneelo as the top 44 footboarders are above the average surfer. At that level, competition can become intense: a World Title is at stake after all.

Chayne lives less than a kilometre from Albert Munoz, a transplant from Puerto Rico now resident in Wollongong, also a two-time kneeboard world champion and one of Chayne’s best mates. The two don’t surf together all that much because both have young families and wildly different day jobs (Albert holds a PhD and is a university professor, Chayne is a fireman and a qualified signwriter.) Chayne reckons he has the pick of the surf because his work allows more flexibility to plan sessions around the forecasts, while Albert’s job dictates when he’s able to surf. Albert can be found at East Corrimal any day there are waves, (outside of office hours), while Chayne tends to travel the South Coast a lot more, hunting quality. When they do surf together, surprisingly, there’s little competition. Said Chayne, We don’t compete at all when we’re free-surfing, at least I don’t. I like watching what he’s doing, but that old cliché of trying to do better, you know - he’s done a turn, I want to do one better … I think we’re getting a bit old for that.

The two first met at the World Titles on the Sunshine Coast in the early 2000s. Chayne remembers Albert as a really annoying little bastard in the water who just wanted every single wave that came in. Freesurfing he was annoying the hell out of me. I think I had a bit of a go at him, told him he can’t have every wave and to just calm down. He just ignored me and paddled away. After Albert moved to the South Coast and joined the WAKAs, the two ended up mates. It’s a solid friendship that’s endured some 16 years now, with the pair often travelling to competitions together as well as working on Legless.TV.

A very talented waterman, Chayne surfs because he likes doing it. He rides kneeboards because he likes the point of difference it brings to a line up as well as the pure camaraderie that pervades this tiny branch of surfing’s family tree[RH1] .

Chaynes relationship with the World Title has been fraught from the start. He remembers being ousted by a ruthless American in the quarter-final in 1999, when the competition was run without a priority system. A wave popped up where Chayne and another competitor were sitting.

He was sitting inside me, so I asked him if he was gonna go, and he said no, I’m not going, you go. I went, and I turned around and he was behind me on the wave. I got an interference. One of the dirtiest tricks you’re ever gonna get, I reckon.

Chayne doesn’t push the contest side of things at all.

No, I’m definitely more into freesurfing, 100%. I could never go in a contest again and I‘d be fine. Some people train for it, study opponents and all that sort of thing, yeah: I just go surfing. I also wanted to win this World Title, but … I nearly got knocked out first heat again in this one, it was as close as it gets. I think I’m not that competitive until it gets to the final. I’d rather get knocked out first heat than come second in the final.

Of course in Chayne’s case this is no hypothetical supposition.

In previous titles, where I’ve bombed out first heat, I couldn’t have cared less. I’ve just gone ‘oh well, that was funny.’ But when I’ve worked to get to the final, through the whole contest, and then I don’t win, that actually does crush me a little bit at that point. Kyle Bryant mentored me a little through this contest. He sent me a message that said ‘Don’t come second, mate, second’s fucked. You’re better off getting knocked out first heat than you are coming second.’ I reckon he’s 100% right.

At the 2009 event, held at Opunake, NZ, Chayne was seeded into round 3 but was knocked out in his first heat. Unfazed, he took off in a campervan with his brother and a mate and a guidebook.

We had a Surfing New Zealand book, no kids, no women. We just travelled around and went surfing. We chased wherever was offshore and had swell, had a few beers every afternoon.  Every corner we turned we got pumping waves. We scored everywhere we went. Best surf trip I’ve ever been on. We just got lucky – unlucky in the contest, lucky in the trip.

Kneeboarding’s regularly criticised for the age of the people who do it. With a heyday perceived to be somewhere in the late 70s, kneeboarding has produced several world champions over the age of 40. Past winners have expressed a desire to see the world title go to new, younger surfers, but this is a branch of surfing whose constituency is aging, into which few younger surfers care to venture. The event this year was remarkable in that both finalists were under 40. Chayne is as keen as anyone to see new blood in the sport. Who does he rate?

Well, it’s an ageing sport. The talent pool in that younger age range isn’t deep, but there are some guys. Tom Novakov (son of past World Champ Michael Novakov) came through the harder side of the draw and took down a couple of guys people probably wouldn’t have expected him to take down, but he surfed well, he had me on the ropes in the quarters. There’s a young kid from Dee Why who’s surfing really well at the moment, Charlie Mowbray – he wasn’t there (at the World’s), but he surfs really well. He wouldn’t be 20 yet. Owen Fairweather, he’s from Victoria. His surfing is so much better than any of us were at his age. I wasn’t even kneeboarding at his age - he’s 14, I think. He’s ripping, he’s going to be one to watch, for sure. His dad, Pete, has won the Phillip Island comp. In fact, he’s the only Vicco to win Phillip Island.

That’s fine, but is there enough new blood entering the sport for it to continue as a competitive field?

Yeah, there’s enough to keep it going. There’s not enough for it to reach new heights or anything like that, but they’re trickling. There’s probably just as many kneeboarders now as there were when I started out.  

So, what was it that drew you in to riding kneeboards in the first place?

When I started, I was riding bodyboards and kneeboarding, but I went full cripple around the time I left school, when I was around 17 or 18. It was just … fun! I kind of liked the fact that it was different. Surfing Pipe all the time, it was just so suited to that, and just doing turns. I was riding dropknee before – you do a turn and the tail slides out and you go into a spinner. You do a turn on a kneeboard and it just holds the rail, you’re just down low and … you’re carving rather than just sliding.

So, Chayne is a world champ who just wants to go surfing. With Wollongong the long-established centre of Australian kneeboarding, he surfs a lot with Albert, his World Title arch-nemesis. Some 16 years after their first meeting they seem to have worked out how to get through a session by dividing the available waves equably between themselves, but the contrast between freesurfing friendship and cut-throat competition is not lost on Chayne. Their friendship has been forged over years, through long hours at close quarters - travelling to comps, sleeping in cars, hunting waves together. When I pointed out that their friendship might be seen as unusual, Chayne agreed.

No way that would happen with the standup guys. Their one and two are focused on contests all year, training and eating right. They have to, it’s their job. I couldn’t think of anything worse than a sponsor putting pressure on you, saying that you have to finish in the top ten this year or we’re going to cut your sponsorship money, that pressure must be insane. We don’t have to worry about that, we just go surfing. If the World Titles are on one year and we don’t want to go - like Spain (the last World Title two years ago) - we just don’t go. Just go surfing. You know, the odd person over in New Zealand actually looked at me funny like that. They’d see you going for a surf and they’d say, ‘Oh, you’re going to do some training for your heat’. I’d say, no, I’m just going surfing mate. Yeah, people are funny.

The 2020 World’s contest, like many others, was marred by inconsistent surf. With a contest window of limited size, and a lot to get through - with age divisions as well as the big one, The Open - the organisers had a busy week. The Open Final came right at the end, but the best waves arrived much earlier in the week.

The Final was easily the worst waves of the whole contest, through every age division, every heat. It was almost unsurfable. They waited until the very top of the tide. I mean, every surfer on the planet knows at the top of the tide it goes slack – no waves break. It was up against a concrete wall, so there was backwash through the whole line-up. It was one to two foot, it was choppy. There was only pretty much one good wave caught in the final, and that was my first wave. That was why I managed to keep him off, because after that first one there was stuff all.

Chayne took that one scoring wave, and priority, and hung on.

It’s not something I do, ever, but I’ve had those other finals where it was always my fault: something went wrong, I didn’t do something right and lost it. Well, I wasn’t going to lose this one, so it was about the last 8 minutes, and I had priority. I just sat half a metre away from him. Every time he paddled, I paddled. I don’t know that he could have caught any waves, but I knew they were going to be no good, and he was getting desperate and taking off on just anything. I managed to hold him right down to the wire. Neither of us got to perform, it was horrible. I did apologise. With about five minutes to go, I said I’m sorry about this mate, but I’ve got to do it. He was fine with it. He just laughed and said, ‘Yeah, it is what it is’, and I continued to block him. It might have meant more to him than me, maybe I shouldn’t have blocked him, but I don’t know, I don’t think he was going to get a wave anyway. They just didn’t come in.

We talked briefly about money and the influence it has on surfing. Chayne likes the idea of surfing as amateur sport.

People are in these competitions and everything, but they’re not that competitive. We’re not surfing for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So, why do the contest at all? Were you motivated by the titles you didn’t win previously?

That was my full motivation. My motivation for going to the contest to start with … well, I actually wasn’t going to go, but Parkesy phoned me and said he’d appreciate it if I went. You know, as promotion for his boards and all that, so I went. I had pretty much no intention. When Albert asked me if I was going I was probably 90% not going, but once I was there, and once I got to the quarters, I thought, I’m not going to let another one go, I’ve got to get this one.

And the lovely Mrs Simpson - what does the missus make of it?

She just loves that I love it. She’s proud of me for winning the World Title, but she says to me all the time … I go away on these trips with Zion and Drag and we do these video clips and she always says ‘I don’t know why you go in the contests, you get way more enjoyment out of doing this’. She’d rather me not go in the contests, just go away with those guys, do the videos. She knows I’m not stressed about doing that stuff. I always have fun and in my eyes it does a whole lot more for kneeboarding than a contest win does. A lot of people said that to me while we were over there, that they really appreciate the clips that we put out, cos there’s no-one else doing that. I wish there was – I don’t want to watch myself surf! I’ve had quite a few messages on Instagram and Facebook from younger guys that are getting into it because of those clips. They’re not getting into it because they might win a contest.

Particularly when you have a contest with the final held in unsurfable conditions. There was that one day where everybody turned up and it was offshore and barrelling. In my mind, that would be the time to have a contest. Just put everybody in the water and see who’s going to be the best.

Yeah, it was cooking. That was the day they did all the age divisions. They didn’t do the Opens that day. The day after the final, on the way to the airport we went in and surfed that beach again and it was even better – it was fucking cooking! Me and Maukino and another young guy from New Zealand. They were keen to surf some swell as well, it was 10 out of 10 pumping. There was me, about 4 American kneeboarders and a bunch of local guys. The whole beach was cooking. So, if the final had been on that next day, and we’d had video, well that would have done wonders for competition kneeboarding.

This year the South Africans kicked off a big campaign with a lot of big claims and were all out to win the Title, and they didn’t get it. They had some wins, but not the big one. How did they take that?  

The South Africans were great. They motivated me big time to go, actually. They were all online with the Saffa attack and they were going to take over and that fully motivated me to go over and not let ‘em win. But they’re really good blokes and they’re really good surfers. There’s three or four of those guys who are world class, and they’re good guys. Albert and I were in a heat with Lester (Sweetman) who was their main threat, it might have been round 5, and we knocked him out and I thought – he’s a really nice bloke, really chummy, wanted to have a chat, gives you props on your surfing and all that - but I thought when he got knocked out he was going to lose it, but he was fine. Came up and shook our hands, smile on his face - Great surfing with you - and off he went. And they’re all the same. Yeah, top blokes and if they keep doing these contests like they’re talking about, just keeping the ball rolling, one of those blokes is going to be at the top in no time.  

Chayne has an uncanny ability to thread his way through deep barrels and an explosive above the lip attack. Both are documented in a growing body of stills and video online via Legless.TV and longtime sponsors Zion and Drag. Chayne’s widely recognized by kneeboarders as one of a handful of surfers pushing the performance boundaries. His name is as familiar in kneeboarding as Simon Farrer or Peter Crawford. His win was popular.

I need to mention that. The support we got from people I don’t even know, just random people stopping us to say that they wanted me to win, they needed me to win. That put a bit of pressure on, for sure!

So is the pressure off, now you’ve won a World Title?

It will take the pressure off in a way, but … I don’t know how I’m going to word this without offending people, but I don’t want another 50 year old to win the title. My motivation going into the next one is to make sure we don’t get someone old. You know, see some of the kids go through instead of those really old blokes.

It’s great that your style of surfing has finally been recognized. Don’t get me wrong. Simon for instance: he’s a great surfer, but he doesn’t surf the way you do. He’s less progressive, more of a classical surfer. You’re different. Long barrels and then massive airs.

That’s how I want people to know me, I want them to know me as the guy who’s in a barrel and comes out and does an air. I don’t want to just be a guy who’s got a World Title. Freesurfing, I wouldn’t have been happy with any of the waves I surfed in the contest, except for one in the teams challenge, I almost would have just went in and done something else for the day cause I just wasn’t surfing well.

So being World Champion, does that do anything for you?

Well, people have been coming up to me at the beach and congratulating me on winning the World Title, but it’s funny, having a kneeboarding world champ. Like, what does that even mean? It’s more embarrassing than anything. It’s a funny thing, competition. There are people around that I surf with, whose opinions about surfing mean something to me. I’m good mates with those people, and they’ve all congratulated me, and that feels good. They’re genuinely happy for me as well. There’s a few guys around who’ve been saying - ‘Oh, I thought you were world champ already, you know, I don’t see anyone else surfing like you surf.’ And that’s such a wanker comment, but that’s what’s been   happening. At the moment, the guys I surf with are all pro surfers: Asher Pacey, Harry Bryant, Craig Anderson and all these big names. When those guys come up and say, ‘Fark, how was that turn,’ that’s … well[RH2] , having guys that shred in the surf, that you look up to, telling you that a wave that you got or a turn that you did was sick, yeah, that’s a better feeling for sure than a contest win.”

Chayne’s back home in Wollongong and keen to get back on the road making videos with the crew from Zion wetsuits. He had surfed twice already the day we spoke and was pretty pumped.

“The guys I travel and surf with, I don’t ever get the feeling that they’re like - why have we got this kneeboarder with us. They’re just stoked on what I’m doing, that I’m doing something different, they’re happy to tell me that I got a good wave, or did a good turn. When you’ve got people like Taj Burrow or Dane Reynolds commenting on your clip, that sort of blows my mind. That’s pretty big.”

Words: Rob Harwood - Legless TV

Images: Steen-16images, Richard Kotch, Others supplied by Chaye