Occy has been getting vertical for a long time. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
A refrain often seen on surfing comment boards is this: “stick to surfing.” It’s generally reserved for something with a political slant. Something to do with our changing climate. Our rising seas. Our acidifing oceans. Things that affect all of us, not just surfers. “Stick to surfing” is dumb, because surfing does not occur in a vaccuum. Surf history has many examples of surfers not sticking to surfing — perhaps most famously Tom Carroll’s boycott of South African events during apartheid — but in 1985, the SAND contest occurred on Australia’s Sunshine Coast.
SAND (Surfers Against Nuclear Destruction) was, according to the Australian and New Zealand Surf Film Archive, “the first ever surf contest with a political agenda.”
SAND events ran from the mid-’80s into the ’90s, with the goal of promoting peace and raising funds for charities. There were a pile of high-level pros involved at this event, but the most notable in the clip you see here were Gary “Kong” Elkerton and Mark “Occy” Occhilupo.
“Kong was surfing at his home beachbreak,” said the narrator of 1985’s Blazing Boards, the surf film that included this clip. “His local knowledge would later bring him into a classic match against Mark Occhilupo.”
Although Kong was two years older than Occy and was well-established as the guy to beat, Occy wasn’t going to let that happen. He ended up taking the heat with a perfect 10. Cheyne Horan went on to win the event, and hopefully every competitor got to take home one of those tee-shirts shown at the beginning of the clip.
