Photo: Nate Smith
A couple of weeks ago I was talking to Kai Otton after a heat win in the Quik Pro France. I always enjoy talking to Kai Otton, heat win or otherwise. Smart, honest and funny, he is a good person to be around. He also goes for the Parramatta Eels, which in my books is one of the highest marks of a man. Anyway this year though we seem to be talking more and more after heat wins. In France, I asked him if he could win the event. His response was adamant and confident. “I can win this thing and cement myself in the top 10. That’s all I want to do. Before I finish my career I want to nail one, that’s what’s driving me.” Kai didn’t go on to win the Quik Pro, losing a close quarter to Parko, but he fulfilled his ambition at the Rip Curl Pro Portugal.
That win came on the back of a run of incredibly consistent results, his last four going: semi, quarter, quarter, win and his worst result all year being a 13th. “You don’t fluke those results on the Tour now,” an ASP judge told me. “And especially Tahiti, Trestles and France. Those are places that show you up.
Otts, one of the most affable and positive of surfers and one that easily slots in the top 5 of good blokes on tour was understandably ecstatic. At 30 years of age, his maturity is showing and he senses his time must come now.
“One of the things that has changed for me this year is my girlfriend being pregnant, I’m pretty excited about that,” he said. “It’s unbelievable, it’s the next chapter I’m really looking forward to. It’s amazing to have all of the support, all my hometown of Tathra, my Mom and Dad who supported me all of my career. To get here is kind of a pinnacle for me.”
Reaching the summit. Pic: ASP/Cestari
And it’s not easy to win a world tour event. Ace Buchan after his win in Tahiti put it in some perspective. “I feel we might look back at this era and realise we just had an amazing five or so guys at the top. If you look at Kelly, Joel, Mick, Parko and Taj, and Andy before we lost him, you know that’s basically the top six from 2002. It’s an incredibly talented status quo that have had a grip on the events. So to win one is bloody hard and a massive achievement.”
Damn straight it is, and Kai didn’t do it the easy way, overcoming John John, Fanning and Parko just to get to the final. It was the heat against his good mate Mick that was probably the gnarliest though, with the world title on the line.
“I’m going to whoop him,” Otton had said before the quarter. “I don’t care, I want to win an event and that’s all I want. And I helped Mick once. I beat Kelly in Brazil in 2007 and he went on to win his first world title that day, so if anything he owes me one.” He laughed at the end there, as he often does, but when he sat on Mick for the last three minutes of the heat with priority, there was no question of Kai’s will to win. “I knew what I had to do, and I did it. There was no words spoken, we both know what it takes out there.”
Otton now moves to 7th in the world, the highest ranking of his career and gains an elevated respect in the surfing world. He is not just a journeyman, a joker good in the tube but always on the bubble. He is a man on a mission and with a surfing act that is now a threat in any conditions, at any time. The tributes and the congrats were pouring in for what must be one of the most popular winners in a long long time although I think legend Mark Warren said it best. “There is a God! So stoked for the boy from Tathra.”
