From issue 580 – Read more here.

Great rivalries are what really make sport compelling to watch.We may marvel at brilliant individual displays of skill, but gritty, emotionally charged tussles are what really captivate us. Invariably, it’s often these scenarios, which pit two brilliant, but evenly matched competitors against one another that produce otherworldly performances. Often the results are beyond the reckoning of even those carrying them out as one competitor drags the other into a realm where the seemingly impossible happens.

In professional surfing the defining rivalry of the late 70s and early 80s was between Mark Richards and Cheyne Horan. Richards was the long-limbed, politely spoken Novocastrian whose humble demeanour belied a ruthless streak in competition. He wore a curly mop and had a precise but slightly unorthodox style.With his knock- knees and wide-flung arms,Tracks dubbed him the wounded gull. MR shaped the twin fins he rode in most events (it was still singles in Hawaii) and his success ushered in an era when swallow tail twins became ubiquitous on coastlines round the world.

Meanwhile, Horan boasted a gymnast’s muscular frame beneath a shock of blonde hair. His low-slung power approach was peppered with radical direction changes and moves – like the 360 – considered highly progressive for the time. In Tracks he was once labelled ‘Kid Dynamo’ and later ‘The Horror’.

Richards was articulate but relatively conservative in his outlook – a quiet Australian over achiever. Meanwhile, Horan seemed to draw on disparate influences. He quoted eastern philosophy, pursued alternate diets and infamously embraced experimental board designs.

Reflecting on the dynamic between him and MR Horan stated, “It was like the tennis rivalry between Borg and McEnroe. He was the iceman like Borg and even though my personality wasn’t really like McEnroe’s that’s how people at the time tried to frame it… “It was just the full on psyche out at that stage –everything from our training to our boards. We would be in the surf together all the time outside of heats. Often we were the last to leave the water.We’d talk but it was always about trying to get an edge…about boards or he’d talk about this magic wax that he had that he thought would make a difference… I think I had him in man on match ups though. It was something like 13 to 8…”

The accompanying cover shot shows Cheyne dripping in glory after his win over MR in the final of the 1982 Stubbies event at Burleigh Heads. In the lead up to the Australian leg of the Tour that year Cheyne remembers he had been living in a kind of tree house at the back of Broken Head with Chris Brock, whose Angourie tree house had earlier been enshrined in surfing folklore when it appeared in ‘Morning of the Earth’. As for the leafy Broken Head digs, Horan couldn’t be more complimentary. “I called it the best room I’d ever lived in. It was a dome Perspex with a mosquito net on the outside and we had a gutted slot machine for a fireplace.”

While his living arrangements may have been rustic, Cheyne embraced technology when it came to preparing for the contests. “The idea of using video footage to improve your surfing was just coming in. Before that you had to use Super 8 footage.When video came in, suddenly it was instant and you could go back and watch the footage straight away.” In the lead up to the Cronulla event I was able to get my surfing really in tune by working with a videographer, Rodney Cole.

The video analysis served Horan well. Surfing against MR in the final, he won the first event of the Oz leg, the Straight Talk Tyres Open at Cronulla. However, the follow-up win at The Stubbies was probably the sweeter victory. The Stubbies was a colossal event and Horan relished competing in front of the throng of Gold Coast fans who crammed onto the Burleigh Headland or claimed front-row viewing on the fabled, basalt boulders. “I loved competing in front of the Stubbies crowd… It was probably bigger than Snapper is now with the Quiksilver Pro – just the number of people covering that Burleigh headland.”

By 1982 Horan had already finished runner- upintheWorldTitleracethreetimes–once to Rabbit and twice to MR. Desperate to claim his first crown he was willing to use all kinds of cunning and trickery to gain the upper-hand. In the Stubbies final in ’82 he wanted an element of surprise and sought inspiration from the master of mind-games, Michael Peterson. “In the final I hid in the rocks and waited until MR was in the water and then paddled down towards him.We got that idea of hiding from the crowd and the competitor from MP. Paul Neilson told me to sit on the bank and let MR stay deep. It was really strange Burleigh – a bit all over the place. MR sat deeper and missed a few of the peaky waves and in the end that was the difference.”

After back-to-back victories, Horan bolted tothefrontintheWorldTitleraceagainst his archrival. However, MR was able to reel him in over the course of the year. According to Cheyne it came down to one event in Brazil, which MR didn’t attend. “If I won the competition, the World Title was mine, but I lost on a 3/2 judging decision in the quarters or the semis.The two local judges had me winning the heat.”

As history shows, MR one his fourth Title in 1982 and Horan finished second for a fourth straight year. Beyond the intense scowls, paddle battles and traded barbs that are synonymous with competition, intense rivals often become friends. Cheyne certainly suggests there is no beef between him and MR.

“We’re both family men now and our competitive era is all water under the bridge. We don’t really ring each other up but if we see each other we’ll talk about things outside of our competitive era.We’ll talk about boards and family.”