This short take on soon-to-be IPS founder Fred Hemmings was embedded in a longer article titled "Summer in the Islands," which ran in the July 1975 issue of Tracks. This version has been slightly edited. * * * Fred Hemmings was the world champion back in 1968. He still surfs occasionally and runs the Smirnoff Pro-Am each November. He says most of the surfers don’t understand him, but he knows wh...
"Surf Champ Ignored Handicaps," by Bill Cook, ran in the February 2, 1964, edition of the Honolulu Advertiser, not long after Fred Hemmings' win in the Juniors division of the '63 Makaha International. The text below has been slightly edited. * * * Polio, pneumonia, a severe knee injury—none of these things prevented teenager Frederick Mathew Hemmings Jr. from becoming an international surfing c...
This article ran in the October 2008 issue of the Surfer's Journal. It has been slightly edited. * * * The first time I encountered Fernando Aguerre he was dressed like some sort of crazy genie, and he was running around granting everyone wishes. It was at the Waterman’s Ball, the surf industry’s annual environmental fundraiser, and Fernando was in his element. Irrationally bidding up auction it...
This editorial ran in the September 1992 issue of Surfing. It has been slightly edited and shortened. * * * Remember when three-time world champion Tommy Curren captured the gold medal for the United States at the Olympic Games in 1984? Of course you don’t remember that, because it didn’t happen. Surfing, as you probably know, is not a medal sport in the Summer Olympics. It isn’t even an exhibit...
Fernando Aguerre, chairman of the International Surfing Association (ISA), wrote this defense of surfing and the Olympics for the Spring 1996 issue of the Surfer's Journal. It was a rebuttal to Steve Pezman's editorial from the previous issue. Aguerre's article, below, has been shortened and slightly edited. * * * In the last issue of The Journal, you ran an article regarding the improbability o...
This article ran in the February 1997 issue of Australia's Surfing Life. * * * "The door is not closed," International Olympic Committee chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch told his International Surfing Association counterpart Fernando Aguerre when they met in Lausanne last June to discuss surfing's inclusion in the Olympics, possibly as soon as Sydney in 2000. And so began an agonizing five month...
This editorial ran in the December 1966 issue of SURFER, just after the World Surfing Championships wrapped up. It has been slightly edited. * * * The third World Surfing Championships at San Diego were a milestone in the sport of surfing. Bob Ottum of Sports Illustrated described the competition: “The Championships were a breakthrough for surfing.” How true. Reporting the week-long Championshi...
This article was published as a guest editorial in the Summer 1977 issue of Surf magazine. Gary Filosa, a Vermont-raised surf contest promoter and organizer during the 1970s, and president of his self-founded American Surfing Association, is among the sport's most erratic and provocative figures—but his efforts to bring surfing to the attention of Olympic organizers were tireless, and to that end ...
Surfing qualified to became an Olympic sport in 2016, and makes its Olympic Games debut this week. But getting there was a fraught decades-long process. Here is a brief look at some of the ups and downs, starts and stops along the way, as seen in surf magazine excerpts. Follow links, below, to full-text articles. * * * SURFER, September 1964 The superlative organization of the [1964 World Contes...
Lewis Samuel's 10-part Borrowed Boards series ran in SURFER in 2011 and 2012. The debut, below, is from the March 2011 issue. * * * The concept was simple. Around the world on one-way tickets, bought one at a time. Luggage limited to a single carry-on. No surfboards. What sounded like a problem was intended to be a solution. I aimed to reframe my relationship with surfing by removing all expecta...