It pays to be able to surf well on more than one kind of surfboard. And Ian Gottron is collecting. Photos: YouTube//Screenshot
There are a whole lot of surfers who are way too good at surfing for people not to know their names. For some, it’s just a matter of time before people do, and Ian Gottron is one of those people. He’s one of those people because he’s not a one-board guy. He’s an every board guy.
“Ian Gottron is one of the best ‘ride everything’ surfers people haven’t fully clocked yet, but soon will I hope,” Devon Howard told me via email. “Elite logger, strong on shortboards, alt stuff, mids, and he’s fully capable in legit barrels.”
He’s a recent addition to the Channel Islands team, where it’s likely his talents will be used as a bit of a test pilot alongside Mikey February of some of CI’s more alternative shapes. Log Rap sat down with him and talked about not how insanely talented he is on a wide ranging quiver, what a great example of what a well-rounded surfer is.
Being a well-rounded surfer is a very good thing. Surfing is largely dependent on what Mother Nature is willing to offer up on a particular day, and if you’re stuck on a standard shortboard that’s built for waves that actually go, you’re going to be pretty miserable. If you’ve got an open mind and want to have as much fun as you possibly can in any condition, well, you’re going to want to figure out everything from a longboard to a handplane and everything in between. Otherwise, you’re just depriving yourself. Don’t deprive yourself of fun, because you deserve to have fun.
He’s been a friend of Log Rap for a while, so when his new quiver of Channel Island boards arrived, they sat down with him to talk about… well, just about everything.
“We have spent a lot of time filming with Ian and if you’ve been watching over the years you’ve seen us post a ton of his surf clips,” Log Rap wrote, “but we’ve never really sat down to take a deeper dive into ‘Gato’ until he. was sidelined with this injury.”
The injury wasn’t life-altering, but it certainly was annoying. He busted a hoof when his surfboard did something he wasn’t expecting, and wound up on the couch for a while. “I did the same thing that Kelly Slater did at Cloudbreak,” he laughed, “except I did it on a one-foot wave.”
Keep an eye on Gottron, because this isn’t the last you’ll see of him.
