Excerpted from "Boy You Gotta Carry That Weight," by Drew Kampion, which ran in the March 1970 issue of SURFER. Kampion's article reported on the 1969 Smirnoff Pro-Am and the 1969 Santa Cruz Big-Wave Contest; Johnny Fain, one of the older competitors, did not place in the former and was 4th in the latter.

Johnny driving north in his paneled Ford Falcon wagon. Two Formula Model boards in back. Greg Noll maybe on his back. Ex-movie man. Been sick a lot lately. All eggs now in one basket: surfing contests. The trip hurts financially. All surfing stars aren’t rich. Fain needs a win, place, or show in Santa Cruz. After several recent contests: “What am I doing wrong? Why aren’t I winning?”

What can ya say? John’s hair ain’t long, he doesn’t use drugs, and he wants to win. All this works against him on today’s competition scene. Not that long hair, drugs, and winning are bad. Not that the judges aren’t on his side—cause probably the older judges would love for him to win. Trouble is, John finds himself at the opposite pole from the surfing style that happens to be in vogue this year. So they (the judges) are afraid. They're afraid that if they score John high on a wave, it will be taken as a value judgment on Fain’s style, way of life, and approach to surfing, and therefore in opposition to “what’s happening.” And because lots of other people are looking at surfing and Fain in the same way, they can get away with this stuff without too much hassle.

What this means is, the judges are not watching the surfboard or the positioning or the difficulty of a maneuver. The judges—for the most part incapable of a valid aesthetic decision—are making these aesthetic decisions in a place where aesthetic decisions are meaningless. If you’re gonna have these asinine displays in the first place, you might as well stick by the goddam rules, no matter how absurd they are, instead of sending people out in the water to do a certain thing, and then wind up judging them on something so totally esoteric that the winner of the heat could just as well have stayed out of the water and played with himself. It would be nice if people like John Fain could be judged rationally and objectively and not automatically penalized because they were famous in another era.

"WHY JOHNNY FAIN GOT SCREWED AT THE SANTA CRUZ BIG-WAVE CONTEST," BY DREW KAMPION (1969)

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