Before Cheyne Horan became the ‘Kid Dynamo’ of surfing’s nascent pro-tour, he was the Australian skateboarding champion and a star member of the Coca Cola skate team.
In 1976 the Coke team toured Australia, doing shows for the suburban masses in malls across the continent. Cheyne and a crew of hand-selected teens would jump, slide, and spin for crowds of cheering groms dosed up on soft drink.
One of the featured tricks in the Coke skate demos was the skateboard jump. Wearing straps on his lightweight board, Cheyne would ollie a stack of skateboards for the awestruck crowd. He’d repeat the trick several times, adding another board to the stack with each run to give the whole thing a showman’s touch. “So, it started with about four and would get up to about eight or nine boards,” explains Cheyne.
Cheyne knew Coke had given him a great opportunity and insists he was always conscious of doing the right thing by his sponsors.
“I always loved Fanta. And we wanted to help the sponsor as much as we could. So, I thought, why not jump over the thing with a can of Fanta.”
Eventually, being part of the Coke team began to conflict with Cheyne’s surfing ambitions, and he was forced to let go of the can.
“I lasted almost a year, I think, it got to a point where I had surf contests, and I had a skate exhibition, and I took the surf contest.”