Philippa Anderson wins Maitland Toyota Open and Travis Logie wins Mark Richards Pro
(Merewether, NSW, Australia, 22 March, 2009)
MEREWETHER local Philippa Anderson has become the first ever local surfer to win a final at Newcastle’s 24th annual Surfest competition.
The 17-year-old smashed a 23-year hoodoo that has never seen a local surfer win a main event at Newcastle when she edged out Sunshine Coast surfer Dimity Stoyle (Maroochydore) by less than one-and-a-half points.
In clean, one-metre waves at Merewether beach, the St Phillips Waratah High School student racked up a heat score of 15.10 to Stoyle’s 13.85 to have her name etched on the Maitland Toyota Open trophy.Anderson, who came through the junior ranks of the Hunter Water Stars of the Future program at the Newcastle contest, will soon use her $US2500 prize money to buy a car.
And while she is yet to earn her P plates that will allow her to drive unaccompanied, she proved to the massive crowd of more than 5000 that she is no learner in the water.
The former Port Elizabeth, South African resident moved to Newcastle five years ago and has been a regular in the Merewether line-up ever since her arrival.
Today her knowledge of the Merewether break gave her confidence and assured her win.
“I was just sitting out the back going ‘please God don’t let her get a wave’ and she got one,” said Anderson.
“I saw her first big turn and I was like ‘no!’ but she didn’t get the score and I was just so stoked.”
“This is the biggest win for me ever and to top it off here at Merewether in front of my family is just so good.
“It’s such a great honour to have my name on the winner’s board – it’s just so good,” said Anderson.
And in the tightest men’s final at Newcastle for many years, former ASP Dream Tour surfer Travis Logie (17.50) defeated current ASP Dream Tour surfer Drew Courtney (16.45) from Umina on the New South Wales Central Coast.
Thirty-year-old Logie, who was a world amateur champion at 23, edged out Courtney in the Mark Richards Pro.
Courtney, currently ranked 17th in the world, lost a fin from a favourite board with 12 minutes remaining on the clock.
Although he secured another surfboard, Courtney was never able to secure the 9.25 score required to regain the lead in the wave tussle.
Logie’s two top waves from the tightly contested battle were each worth 8.75, while Courtney’s top wave score was an 8.25.
Hailing from Durban in South Africa, Logie first turned heads when he demolished Kelly Slater in the Nova Schin festival in Brazil in 2005.
While a WQS win remains elusive for Courtney, Logie claimed today’s victory ranks alongside his win at a six-star event in Hossegor, France in 2004.
“This is huge confidence boost. I’ve been training so hard so it’s good to see it pay off,” said Logie.
And pay off it did, with the natural-footer ready to go to the next leg on the Australian professional surfing tour in Tasmania $US5000 richer.
Logie, who is considered by his peers to be one of the very best small wave surfers on the planet, is recovering from a serious knee injury.
But he believes his knee is now 100 per cent and today’s win is the massive confidence boost he needs as he does his best to get back on the elite ASP Dream Tour.
Logie is no stranger to Newcastle.
“This is very prestigious event and I always come here. I am stoked to win at Newcastle,” said Logie.
“Mark Richards is a true icon of the sport of surfing and to win a trophy named in his honour is unbelievable,” he said.
Logie had another tight win in the semi-final, after coming up against local school student Sam Lendrum from Catherine Hill Bay.
Lendrum, (13.50) the last local hope in the Mark Richards Pro, lost to Logie (13.45) by the narrowest margin (0.05-points) in the entire competition.
The unlucky 18-year-old, who had earlier led the victory charge of the Catherine Hill Bay boardriders in the Coca-Cola teams challenge, was pipped in the last minutes of the heat by the South African.
While its back to school for Lendrum, other surfers will move to Tasmania to contest the O’Neill Cold Water Classic.
WELCOME TO NEWCASTLE AND WELCOME TO SURFEST!
SURFEST
originated in 1985 when Newcastle’s movers and shakers were desperately trying to banish the city’s grime-ridden industrial image and showcase the unheralded beauty of Newcastle beaches and surf breaks,
Those visionaries developed the BHP Steel International – Surfest’s first incarnation and the richest professional surfing event in the world at that time.
Yes, that’s right – the richest professional surfing competition on the planet at that time.
Surfest has since become Australia’s largest surfing festival.
With a population exceeding 500,000 people, Newcastle is New South Wales’ second largest city and is situated just a two hour drive up the F3 or a train ride north of Sydney.
The premier surfing event at Surfest has always attracted the world’s best surfers because of the city’s unique hospitality and the distinct late March/early April possibility of north-easterly swells coming in from either storm activity in the Coral Sea or from low depressions sending southerly swells up through “pinball alley” – the oceanic area between Tasmania and New Zealand.
Ideal conditions at Merewether see southerly swells fanned by north-west winds barrelling through from third reef, providing rides where a surfer’s ability can be fully demonstrated to crowds gathered in the natural amphitheatre that is Merewether beach.
On final’s day in 2006, (the event was moved to Merewether from Newcastle on several contest days during 2006 due to massive southerly swells smashing into the eastern seaboard) when Brazilian Neco Padaratz took the main trophy in three metre waves and set off on the path that saw him regain a spot on the 2007 Championship Tour after a year’s suspension, more than 10,000 people rocked up to Merewether to check out all the action.
It was pure magic – all the elements fired and the planets aligned for a most memorable Newy day.
It is Merewether that saw Mark Richards, Luke Egan, Matt Hoy, Simon Law and Nicky Wood develop the abilities that enabled them to participate at the elite level of competition and mix it with the best in the world.
The jewels in the 2009 Surfest crown are two World Qualifying Series (WQS) events – the $37,000 AUD 2-star Mark Richards Pro for men and the $18,000 AUD 2-star Maitland Toyota Open for women.
This year, Surfest also offers the grade two international Arnette Pro for boys and grade one international Arnette Pro for girls.
And there’s the Sanbah Cadet Cup. And heaps more.
In 2007, organisers took a massive gamble when they moved the event’s traditional HQ from Newcastle Beach.
The decision to move five kilometres to the south – to Merewether – was confirmed by surf deity Huey as a righteous call and the contest was blessed with some cranking stand-up barrels throughout the contest period.
In 2009, Surfest will again run at the fabled right-handers that peel down the rock and sand bottom off Merewether beach.
It’s at these breaks that local icon and the competition’s patron learnt the skills that would see him win four world titles – more than any other male competitor in the world, except for the “Floridian Freak” and nine-time world champion Kelly Slater (who, incidentally, claimed a Surfest crown in 2004).
In 2009, Newcastle is the second of five stops (Gold Coast, Newcastle, Tasmania, Margaret River, Bells Beach) on the Australian leg of the international men’s pro surfing tour calendar.
Surfest is Newcastle’s only annual international sporting event. The MR Pro often attracts around 200 surfers from Australia, the United States, Hawaii, Brazil, Japan, South Africa, New Zealand and France.
Back in 1986, the surfing competition – then worth $US56 000 – was won by wonder kid Tom Curren, who racked up 33 wins while on the pro tour – a figure only recently surpassed by Slater.
Surfest and Newcastle were thrilled to have Tom and his family at the event in 2005 as guests of honour. Surfest is like that -it has a proud history and it honours its champions in a manner befitting their standing in the global surfing community.
2007 world champion Mick Fanning has won Surfest three times and Mark Occhilupo has twice climbed atop the podium.
Surfest has always acknowledged champions – none more than our own four-time world champion Mark Richards. But you can call him MR.
Dr MR (MR was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Newcastle for his contributions to the community), whose handcrafted surfboards remain in demand around the world, lives with his long time sweetheart and wife Jenny and his kids right across the road from his beloved Merewether, where he has seen the inside of more barrels than you’ve had baked dinners.
The “Mayor of Merewether” is the patron of the event and is highly regarded throughout the world and along with two of Newcastle’s other great achievers on the world stage – Andrew ‘Joey’ Johns and silverchair – he is particularly revered in Newcastle.
Away from surfing, MR also plays an important role in the Hunter’s organisation for parents and families who have lost children to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).
Mark and Jenny lost a child to SIDS and in that inimitable Richards way, he and Jenny have both given so much back to the community in trying to find answers that will one day see an end to this terrible affliction.
Surfest has long raised and donated funds for the SIDS organisation to assist families and further research. Some of surfing’s best known names have put their hands in their pockets to help out.
Surfest has always been conscious of ensuring the involvement of today’s kids who will be tomorrow’s champions.
For that reason, the full gamut of contests run for 12 days and involve more than 750 surfers. Logistically this is a big challenge – but Newcastle, a city renowned for giving people a chance and encapsulating the Australian ethos of a fair go – would not have it any other way.
We think that the event is more than a great surf competition – it is a celebration of a city and its people and their special relationship with Australian beach culture.
Most of all we are thrilled that we can provide the people of Newcastle – and now, through the webcast facilities being provided by coastalwatch.com, the rest of the world – with the opportunity to see how this former engine room for steel production has reinvented itself in the new millennium to host 13 days of non-stop surfing action in one of Australia’s most beautiful cities.
See you here. It’s gonna be a hoot!
Mark Richards Festival Patron
At every turn in his life he’s shown us a gracious, humble character, competitive without spite, winning without greed, losing without bitterness.
There would be few people in Newcastle or the surfing world who have not heard of four-time world surfing champion, innovative surfboard designer and successful businessman, Mark Richards.
Known to friends and fans as “MR”, Mark Richards was born in Newcastle on the 7th March 1957 and spent much of his childhood catching waves at Merewether Beach. By the age of six he had already mastered a surfboard and won his first trophy in the Newcastle “Under 14 years” school competition. By 15 years, Mark had placed and won at several school-based and national surfing championships and was also beginning to shape his own twin-fin boards to suit his loose, angular surfing style.
Throughout his junior surfing career, he received enormous support from his family and friends, and in 1961 his father transformed his used car dealership into a surf shop, becoming one of the first places in Australia to sell surfboards outside Sydney. MR has continued the Richards Surf Shop on Hunter Street and now exports about 250 handcrafted surfboards a year to countries throughout the world. He has remained true to his craft and shapes all the boards himself.
The rise of Mark as a world-class surfer paralleled the rise of professional surfing as an international sport. At 18 he came on to the surfing scene with a splash, winning the Smirnoff Pro-am at Waimea Bay and the World Cup at Sunset Beach in Hawaii. In 1979, Mark won his first world title and soon dominated the pro-surfing circuit, winning again in each of the next three years.
Suffering a back and ankle injury, in addition to mental and physical fatigue, Mark relaxed into semi-retirement but by 25 years of age had achieved legendary status in the surfing and sporting worlds. He later came out of retirement to win the Billabong Pro twice and the World Masters Championship Over 40 Division in 2001 and running second to Wayne Rabbit Bartholomew in 2003.
Throughout his career, Mark became known as the “wounded gull” in recognition of his peculiar surfing style: knees braced, hunched shoulders, arms extended and hands bent up at the wrists. Despite this seemingly awkward stance, he was smooth, balanced and flexible through the water and this matched his outward temperament, which surf writer Nick Carroll described in a tribute: “at every turn in his life he’s shown us a gracious, humble character, competitive without spite, winning without greed, losing without bitterness.”
It is these characteristics that have undoubtedly drawn Mark towards the various community-based roles that he now undertakes. He is the Honorary President of the Australian Surfrider Foundation, an environmental organisation dedicated to protecting the coastal environment and along with his wife Jenny, is patron of the Sids and Kids Hunter Region organisation. Together they have raised more than $500,000 for research into sudden infant death syndrome after they tragically lost a child through cot death.
In addition, Mark has supported the John Hunter Children’s Hospital, CanTeen and a NSW government campaign against violence towards women. He received an Order of Australia Medal in 1994 and the Centenary Medal in 2003. In another first, MR became the first world champion surfer to be recognised by the academic community when The University of Newcastle awarded him an Honorary Doctorate for his services to the community.
Mark Richards is a man whose passion and talent for surfing led him to become the world’s best but it is a true reflection of his loyal character that he has remained in his hometown and contributes to Newcastle’s future through sporting, business and community circles.
The list of MR’s achievements include:
Surfing Magazine Surfer of the Year 1979, 1980 and 1982
Surfer Magazine Poll Winner 1979, 1980, 1981 and 1982
Sun-Caltex NSW Sportsman of the Year 1981. Finalist 1980 and 1982
ABC Sportsman of the Year Finalist 1982 and 1983
NSW Dept of Sport and Recreation Hall of Champions, inducted 1981
NBN 3 Sportsman of the Year 1979, 1980 and 1981, with a Special Award for Excellence in 1982
Confederation of Australian Sport, Sport Australia Awards, Male Athlete of the Year finalist, 1981 and 1983. Best single sporting performance finalist 1981 and 1983
Association of Surfing Professionals Services to the Sport Award 1988
Australian Surfriders Association Hall of Fame, inducted 1985
Newcastle Sporting Hall of Fame, inducted 1992
Medal of the Order of Australia, for Services to the Sport of Surfing, 1994
Surfing Walk of Fame, Huntington Beach, California, inducted 1995
Doctor of Letters, (honoris causa), University of Newcastle, October 2004
MR remains a rare beast in professional sport – a down-to-earth bloke unaffected by star-status and still maintaining widespread respect from both peers and upcoming surfers who weren’t even thought of when he was carving his name into the history books. MR still lives at his beloved Merewether with wife Jenny and their kids. He still runs the surfboard shop that his father started. He still yaks with anyone in the area – from mad keen grommets to the old blokes that lap the Merewether Baths day in and day out, all weather, all year.
When the westerly winds are blowing, a southerly swell is cooking, and the blue pits are there for the taking somewhere between the third reef and the ” ladies”, there remains more than an off chance that the man nicknamed the “wounded gull” will emerge from one of those barrels with a smile as big as the one he peeled off when he was out there learning just what it takes to be the best in the world – over and over and over and over again.