Cory Lopez always surfed Teahupo’o with an undeniable fearlessness. Photo: Pete Frieden
Cory Lopez, now 48 years old, has certainly earned his place in the pantheon of surfing greats. In bald statistics, even his long passage in the the venerable Encyclopedia of Surfing recognizes this. Calling him a “Nervy goofy-foot pro from Indian Rocks, Florida…world-ranked #3 in 2001…A visceral show-stealer, with diamond-hard balls…began surfing as a preschooler… made a reputation as the world’s best young high-performance freesurfer, quick and flexible, with gyroscopic balance that guided him through the most ambitious tailslide and aerial maneuvers ever seen…During an early round heat at the 1999 Gotcha Tahiti Pro, the handsome dark-haired Lopez rode deep inside the tube on a pair of big, thick, deadly lefts at Teahupo’o, getting annihilated both times but setting a world tour standard for reckless cool…he returned to Teahupo’o in 2001 to win the event…in 2003 he won the US Open of Surfing… Lopez was featured in more than 30 top ranked surf video’s and was one of the first to surf the mind-bendingly long tubes at Skeleton Bay, Namibia, which earned him”Best Barrel” at the SURFER Poll awards …through all this he was also tight friends with fellow hard-charging surfer and partier Andy Irons.”
There it is, in that last line. His deep relationship with Andy. And though Cory Lopez is so often described as “Andy Irons’ sparring partner,” it is not the only element that defined him. What has defined him has always been the code he’s lived by. Even at a young age, he was centered, responsible and future minded. Smart enough to monetize his surfing ability, smart with his friendships and smart with his success despite the personal challenges of the world tour. And that remarkable code continues to serve him today. Still surfing at a professional level, he’s a father of three and along with wife Jenn, is currently raising three children in the ways of surfing – son Luke and daughters Alana and Layla.
Greatest thing about representing the East Coast.
The East Coast fans. They are really loyal and supportive. I felt like it was an honor to represent the East Coast. And I felt that all the time. And it would make me try harder. I still am trying harder, really.
Greatest competitive surfer?
Well…Kelly was always the smartest competitor. And you know, my brother Shea was a really smart competitor. I mean there’s guys like Sean Sutton, he was on tour for a short time, but, I mean this guy could win a heat. Not just on surf skill, but on the chess match that a surf heat really is. And this was when there were very few rules out there. These kind of guys were the dangerous guys because they could make heats as tacticians. But you’re never gonna argue with Kelly, he was the smartest. The most dominant physically and mentally. You just cannot mess with Kelly in any heat. It wasn’t like give him an inch and he will take a mile, he was out to take the mile no matter what you did. There was no doubt that he would go superhuman and elevate himself to do things out of body.Sometimes you would just sit there in the water and watch him go into a whole other realm And no one else I have ever surfed with has had the ability to do that.
Greatest thing about trying to go “superhuman” yourself.
I’ve had brief moments when I felt like I was, but they were very brief for me. You have to have the brain for it. The brain that is prepared to go there. That will let it happen to you. When the ocean is demanding it of you, you have to be ready. You just have to and that is the difference between a good surfer and a great one. It’s not about just stepping up to the plate, it’s about hitting it out of the park on the first pitch. As a pro, I like I to think I was a fierce competitor, because I really wanted to win. And I would do whatever it took to win. There were times when I would slip and become too nice in a heat. Too fair. And that really hurts when you lose because you give the other guy a little break. Oh man, that hurts. That is a bad night ahead. But there was moments where I had to elevate my game, to take off deeper, later. Waves you didn’t want but you had to take and you made it because you had to. No choice. The ocean will give you that chance to elevate, really it will, but you have to be prepared for it.
Greatest wave in the world?
I can name sessions, but I can’t name the greatest wave. There are too many memories for that. But I will say at my age, I don’t deal with crowds anymore. I’ve had it too good in the past to keep hassling with that. So I guess now the greatest waves to me are the uncrowded ones I go find. And Indonesia is great for that.
Greatest thing about surfing Teahupo’o?
First of all, I had to find the wave when I first started surfing Teahupo’o (literally). I didn’t know where it was. I showed up at 17 years old and had just heard about it. And I mistakenly went out at Ta’apuna and I thought to myself, this doesn’t seem like the Teahupo’o photos I’ve seen. And when I told the guys, they laughed and thought I was out of my mind. They told me you have to keep going to the end of the road to find Teahupo’o, and man, that’s the truth. The end of the line in more ways than one. We didn’t know everything back in the day, no cell phones, no google maps, so we found Teahupo’o finally and surfed it and it was insane for a goofy-foot. And my respect and love for it just grew from there. And I guess the greatest thing about surfing Teahupo’o was that feeling of discovery, whether I was first or not. Just that big gaping blue barrel that I found by myself.
Greatest surfer you ever saw from water level?
Andy Irons would lead that conversation. I mean surfing with him and Kelly at the same time was incredible enough. They were peers in ability, no doubt. But there was this thing with Andy. The unpredictability, the places he would choose to go on a wave were so futuristic. And I believe Andy would do that same thing I said about Kelly, where Andy would elevate to a higher realm. But the way it happened to Andy was different than how Kelly would get there. Kelly would push himself there consciously, purposefully, and Andy would get there more like a bolt of lightning had hit him. You know, the reason I say Andy here was because of the way he could manhandle a wave. The power he had, the fearlessness, the creativity. Andy had that perfect weight on his body for a surfer, he was the perfect height, and he could just really let himself go all the way. I mean when the waves became serious he would just manhandle the lip power for power. In waves that could really hurt you. No one else did that. Andy would play with a gnarly lip where the rest of us, even Kelly, would work with the lip, you know, make sense of it. But Andy, just decimating the wave’s power, making it work for him as if he was in charge of it. No one else in the world have I ever seen do it like that. I mean Kelly and Andy were equals, of course. But Kelly was perfection, and Andy was an animal.
Greatest thing about your life-long friendship with Andy Irons?
I think it was the the mutual respect and love we had for each other. For one thing, we were great friends since we were kids. And we loved to surf against each other. That was really interesting, to feel that way about someone else. It wasn’t an angry thing. It was a fun thing even though we were both vicious in a heat together. I also think that even our freesurfing sessions were very competitive and we both became better surfers because of it. But on the beach we were just good friends and had everything that comes with that. Like family. And I guess we understood each other inside all the fame madness that we were both dealing with. And a lot of that comes from spending so much time on the road with someone. And remember, both our girlfriends were great friends with each other too and that adds a lot to that family feel even though we were so young. But both our girlfriends became our wives, so there was that. Andy and I dated our wives from a very young age and they grew up with us and that really creates a rare bond on the tour and in a professional surfing life. A very family oriented thing. And I loved that even if we had not seen each other in awhile, like when Andy was with Billabong and he was so famous and winning world titles, and my wife and I would not see him and his wife for a little bit, Andy would just call randomly in the middle of everything and just want to say what’s up and just to talk like normal friends do. Like a normal thing inside all the un-normal things in our lives that fame brought. My friendship with Andy was a friendship with a lot of love. And very different than a brotherly love because we were both out there hitting it hard in the same sport. But I would say the core of it all was a real, trustful love between us.
Greatest thing about being a father to young talented surfers?
The greatest thing is that I am here right now in Indonesia with my family. So having children that surf and do it well means I get to go to great waves too. Good waves, powerful waves, empty perfect waves, travel waves. It just keeps my family together and I get to spend incredible times with my children as they grow up. I get to see them stoked and excited and happy, smiling and laughing. I get to see my kids like this a lot more than most parents get to see their kids like that. My goal is to just take my kids to as many good waves as I can while I have them around. Teach them how to be smart and live a smart, exciting life. Who knows where the future leads, but right now, I’m really enjoying these years of surfing with my family.
Greatest thing about wave pools?
It’s obvious. The advancement of the air game. The repetition and being able to hit the same coping over and over and hone a predictable technique. And wave pools are still an evolving game that will eventually lead to different countries having Olympic surfers because the future of the Olympics is obviously wave pools. I think wave pools are going to create a completely different category of surfing, a completely different discipline. And that’s a good thing. Why compare it to the ocean? Just love the pools for what they are. Ridable simulations.
Greatest thing about surf travel?
It was starting from a young age to be able to see the world and take part in it. It really gives you the ability to see how lucky you are. And that is why I’m dedicated to giving my kids the same opportunity I had to travel early. To have all the experiences, having friends all around the world. You become a global citizen by the time you’re 18. Not many people are able to do that. To become that. But surfers can.
Cory, keepin’ it loose in Indo. Photo: Pete Frieden
Your greatest moment in surfing?
The obvious answer is winning the Teahupo’o contest. But thinking back now something different comes to mind. It was 1996 and my brother Shea and I went to surf Mundaka. And this was before Surfline and all that. And we got to surf it with a few locals for about three hours. As good a waves as I had ever seen in my life. The sandbar was perfect, the wind, the swell direction was pinpoint, the tide, the power, the size, all flawless. One after the other, absolutely flawless waves. Before cell phones and websites, my brother Shea was a swell nerd who would read all the newspaper weather pages in any country we were in to find the storms and he would make calls that were usually right on. No kidding. I mean, the surf could be flat and he would put his finger on a map and say we are going here tomorrow. Then he would get us up at three in the morning and we would go and show up with no hope in our hearts and it would just be pumping. So he was a real valuable travel companion. There was a real satisfaction back then in finding those perfect days on his hunches. It felt like an accomplishment. And that Mundaka session was just one of those times that will never happen again like that. No one was even shooting or filming anything, it was just pure stoke and those days are so rare now. Not with today’s technology. It was just the greatest time with my brother during an era that was very different in its own right.
Greatest thing about the WSL today?
I like what they do for the athletes now. The venues are set up so much nicer and the surfers are being treated like real pros. These guys have locker rooms now when we used to just have a towel on the beach and hoped no one stole your keys. I also think it’s great that next year the WSL is getting rid of the halfway cut. They did that cut thing when I was on tour and I thought it was a terrible decision and then when they did it recently, I still thought it was a terrible thing. I’m so thankful that they are getting rid of that because there is nothing worse than being told you’re not good enough halfway through a season. And I also really like how the WSL is becoming a media organization. Highlighting the athletes in a very modern way. That’s really cool, I think.
Greatest thing about approaching 50 years old as a former pro surfer?
I made a late drop today and I found myself really grateful for that. And some guy chandeliered the wave and I pushed through that too and so I’m just really thankful that the way I’ve lived my life is still giving me the opportunity to pull things off like that. It makes me not think about when I’m going to hit the cliff and not be able to do things like that. I know I’m getting older but I’m just so thankful I can still surf at a pro level with my kids in heavy waves. It makes me think of still surfing with my dad. He’s 73 and we still surf together, so there’s plenty of good times ahead. Because I know we all have days that are numbered. Like just how many more surfs do you have in you? I think about that a lot.
Greatest thing about the future of surfing?
People will always be able to go to the beach. I mean it sounds simple, but think about it. You’re around the ocean. That’s the greatest thing ever about surfing, Just being around the ocean and being on the beach. I mean, the future of surfing will always be at the beach and as surfers, we own it.
