When you start to analyse the life of iconic surf legend Martin Potter it doesn’t take long for a reoccurring theme to emerge – You don’t tell Pottz he can’t do something unless you really want him to do it!
Truly great sporting moments have an ability to transcend generations and remain a topic of spirited discussion in pubs and at office water coolers or backyard barbies for decades to come – the ‘Miracle on Ice’, the ‘Thrilla in Manila’, ‘The Shot’ by Michael Jordan, Shane Warne’s ‘Ball of the Century’ at Old Trafford … the list goes on.
For the generation of grommets seeking to whet their insatiable surf appetites in the pre-internet 80s and early 90s when surf news was restricted to magazines and the occasional surf film at your local cinema (or maybe a five-minute segment from Ken Sutcliffe on ‘Wide World of Sports’ there are a few moments that really stand out – Simon Anderson unveiling the thruster at a bombing Bells Beach in the Easter of 1980, the flash of brilliant pink as Tom Carroll laid into the jaw-dropping ‘snap heard round the world’ under a heaving lip during the ‘91 Pipeline Masters, and raise the topic of the birth of aerials with any surf-obsessed Gen-Xer and almost all will recall with giddy delight spying that fabled magazine cover on the newsagent shelves for the first time.
Which version you saw depends on which part of the world you were in. In Australia it was Dean Wilmott’s cover of Tracks in 1987, while in America it was the cover of ‘Surfing’ a few years earlier in the summer of ’84 but there it was in all its glory. The purple and green Blue Hawaii, or the Town & Country yin-yang bathed in decade-defining green and gold spray, sailing through the air, piloted by British-born South African wunderkind Martin Potter.
Regardless of which continent you were in, the impact was immediate and significant. There could be little doubt that this was a defining moment in the ...
