Tim Baker is an Australian journalist specialising in surf culture. He has twice received the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame Culture Award, and is a former editor of Tracks and Australia's Surfing Life magazines. [1] His work has appeared in a range of publications, including Rolling Stone , GQ , Inside Sport , the Sydney Morning Herald , The Australian Way , Playboy , the Australian Financial Review , The Bulletin , as well as numerous surfing magazines. He is the best-selling author of four books on surfing, including Bustin’ Down The Door (HarperCollins, 1996, now in its eighth print run; see also the 2008 film of the same name), High Surf (HarperCollins, 2007), Occy (Random House, 2008), Surf For Your Life with Mick Fanning (Random House, 2009) and The Rip Curl Story (Penguin, 2019). He is currently a senior contributor to Surfing World, Surfing Life, Surfer’s Path (UK), and the Surfers Journal.
Baker has appeared at the Sydney, Byron Bay, and Margaret River writers' festivals and the Sunshine Coast's Reality Bites Festival, and has conducted writing workshops at the Hunter, Sydney and Northern Rivers Writers Centres. He has worked in the media and surfing magazines for 25 years and has surfed and travelled throughout Australia, Indonesia, Hawaii, Central and South America, North America, Europe, Fiji, Tahiti, and Sri Lanka. He lives in Currumbin, Queensland, with his wife and two children, and is currently working on a surfing-based novel.
Robert Kelly Slater is an American professional surfer, best known for being crowned World Surf League champion a record 11 times. Slater is widely regarded as the greatest professional surfer of all time, and holds 56 Championship Tour victories. He won the Laureus World Action Sportsperson of the Year four-times. Slater is also the oldest surfer still active on the World Surf League, winning his 8th Billabong Pipeline Masters title at age 49.
Rip Curl is a designer, manufacturer, and retailer of surfing sportswear and accompanying products, and a major athletic sponsor. Rip Curl has become one of the largest surfing companies in Australia, Europe, South America, North America and South Africa. Globally, Rip Curl is considered a successful member of the "Big Three", of the surf industry alongside Quiksilver and Billabong.
Sofía Mulánovich Aljovín is a Peruvian surfer. She is a 3-time World Surfing Champion, 1 WSL and 2 ISA world championships,. She is the first Peruvian surfer ever to win a World Surf League World Championship Tour event and the first Latin American woman ever to win the World Title, which she did in 2004 In 2004, she won three out of the six World Championship Tour events, and finished the season as Absolute World Champion. Sofia is the only one Latin-american surfer to win 2 ISA World Championships. Sofia won the ISA Championships, 2004 in Salinas-Ecuador and 2019 in Miyazaki-Japan. Her main sponsor is Roxy.
Surf movies fall into three distinct genres:
Patrick Shane Dorian, or "Shane", is an American surfer from Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. He spent 11 years touring on the World Championship Tour as a professional surfer. Dorian quit competition surfing in 2003 to focus on big waves. He is currently a big wave surfer and one of the best in the world at big wave riding.
Bombora is an indigenous Australian term for an area of large sea waves breaking over a shallow area such as a submerged rock shelf, reef, or sand bank that is located some distance from the shoreline and beach surf break. In slang, it is also called a bommie.
Michael Eugene Fanning is an Australian professional surfer who was crowned champion of the Association of Surfing Professionals/World Surf League (ASP/WSL)'s World Tour in 2007, 2009 and 2013. In 2015, he survived a shark attack by what is suspected to be a great white shark during the J-Bay Open finals in Jeffreys Bay.
The Rip Curl Pro, formerly the Bells Beach Surf Classic, is a WSL World Tour surfing competition held in and around Torquay, Victoria and sponsored by surf company Rip Curl. The event is based at Bells Beach, Victoria, Australia. The event winner is awarded the prestigious 'Bell' trophy. It is the longest running professional surfing competition in the world.
Bustin' Down The Door is a 2008 documentary film chronicling the rise of professional surfing in the early 1970s. The film follows a group of young surfers from Australia and South Africa, including Shaun Tomson, Wayne 'Rabbit' Bartholomew, Ian Cairns, Mark Richards, Michael Tomson and Peter Townend, as they relocate to Hawaii encountering obstacles, turf wars and massive wipeouts along the way. Clashes with the locals, some of whom find the newcomers' bravado to be insulting to Hawaiian culture, eventually culminate in death threats against the subjects of the film.
The New York Surf Film Festival is a film festival held in New York City featuring surf films that was held between 2008 and 2013.
Craig Elmer "Owl" Chapman is a surfer. He is considered one of the fathers of the short board revolution. He pioneered board riding with early designs on Oahu by Dick Brewer, including the minigun. The school of surf that Chapman originates from is different from the Australian and South Africans who are best known for Bustin' Down The Door. Their philosophy of western competitive traditions has been argued by other surf pioneers such as Gerry Lopez and Owl Chapman, as being respectful of the Hawaiian culture. Chapman, on the other hand, worked within the Hawaiian community, as a resident of the North Shore, to further the short board revolution.
Nathan "The Hog" Hedge is a professional surfer raised on the Northern Sydney beach of Narrabeen.
Sally Fitzgibbons is an Australian professional surfer on the Association of Surfing Professionals World Tour (2009–2013). In June 2019, she was ranked No. 1 in the world for women's surfing after winning the Rio Pro.
Wayne "Rabbit" Bartholomew is an Australian world champion surfer, surf sports innovator, community advocate and politician. Bartholomew is the former CEO and president of the Association of Surfing Professionals and the creator of the Dream Tour format of professional competition surfing.
Australia is renowned as one of the world's premier surfing destinations. Surfing underpins an important part of the Australian coastal fabric. It forms part of a lifestyle in which millions participate and which millions more have an interest. Australian surfboard-makers have driven innovation in surfboard design and production since the mid-1960s. The country has launched corporate giants such as Billabong, Rip Curl and Quiksilver.
Adriano "Mineirinho" de Souza is a Brazilian professional surfer and also the 2015 WSL World Champion. He has been competing on the World Surf League Men's World Tour since 2005.
Tyler Wright is an Australian professional surfer on the WSL World Tour. She is a consecutive WSL Women's World Champion. She qualified for the 2024 Olympic Games.
Courtney Conlogue is an American professional surfer. She was born in Santa Ana, California. Courtney learned to surf at the age of 4. In 2004 when she was 11, Conlogue was the youngest athlete to be selected to the USA Junior Surf Team. She went on to achieve 11th place in the 2005 ISA World Junior Surfing Championships. In 2009, at the ISA World Surfing Games in Costa Rica, Courtney won an individual and team Gold Medal as a USA Surfing Team member. By the time she was 14, she had won a surfing gold medal as a member of the U.S.A. Team at the X Games. When she was 16 she won the biggest competition in the USA at the Hurley U.S. Open of Surfing, held at her home break in Huntington Beach, California. She won the US Open of Surfing again in 2018.
Lance's Right is a surf reef break located in Indonesia, off Sipore Island, part of Sumatra's Mentawai Island chain. A reef break is an area in the ocean where waves start to break once they reach the shallows of a reef. Lance's Right is known as one of the most perfect waves, and the crown jewel of the Mentawai Isles.
Doug Warbrick is an Australian businessman, founder of the Rip Curl brand and notable figure in the sport of surfing. Warbrick is credited for bringing the longest running surf event in history, the Bells Beach Surf Classic, to the professional surfing circuit. He is a founding member of the ASP World Tour, surf aficionado and athlete mentor.