Interview: Cheyne Horan

“My new thing is speaking kangaroo,” says Cheyne Horan, the runner-up to four world titles during a five-year span of the late 70s and early 80s. He excuses himself for a moment, rests his mobile phone on the roof of a blazing hot car and, not for the first time today, turns his attention to some new customers. “You here for the lesson? Just sign these papers and head down that way. Tony in the red shirt will sort you out.”

That Horan would one day own a mobile phone and, further still, operate a surf school on one of Australia’s most aggressively-populated stretches of coastline takes a while to get one’s head around, especially given his free wheeling and eccentric reputation. That he would also one day counsel Kelly Slater on the art of keeping things simple? “Oh, I’ll tell him all the time,” Horan implores, once the customers are sent on their way to meet Tony in the red shirt, “to keep the exotic stuff for your free surfs and just concentrate on what works for you in competition.”

Growing up in a conservative Italian household in the suburban outskirts of Sydney, posters of the dashing Horan and his trademark crown of stunning blonde hair ushered me through childhood. Much later, I was forever sold when he released a signature model McCoy surfboard, bearing a sticker of a busty, topless woman with flowing dark hair as its racy trademark. Cousin Louie was the first to purchase one such model and I’d loiter in his bedroom long enough to impress the image of said goddess onto my young mind for re-use later in the privacy of my bedroom. Fast forward some 30 years, and I tamp down the urge to relay such memories to Horan. Instead I turn our attention towards a nugget of information he’d dropped in my lap a week earlier. 

—Anthony Pancia

AP You mentioned you regret riding some of the more obtuse equipment you used during those peak competitive years.

CH Yeah well, it’s not quite regret. But in hindsight, it would’ve been smarter for me to be the same as everyone else and just use a thruster. I mean, I still won all over the place, beat the best in the world but, yeah, I went through a lot of heartache going the route I did. I should’ve used my experimental equipment outside of competition and used what everybody else was using during it, but I just couldn’t.

AP You couldn’t? Why not?

CH It all stems back to a dream I had early on. In this dream, everybody was riding thrusters and I could see it was killing creativity in the sport and it was my path to keep that creativity alive. I just couldn’t allow myself to succumb to riding what everyone else was riding and instead chose to keep the dream alive. I’ve always been more interested in the path I’m traveling and opening my mind to new ones. It’s the harder road to travel but I know that my designs worked because they’ve been proven and are still relevant today, whereas a lot of what was being ridden back in the day isn’t. Go figure that out.

AP So let’s talk about the here and now.

CH I’m predominantly a family man. I’ve got three kids, so the average day starts with taking them to school. From there it depends what day of the week it is. I’ve got stand-up paddling classes and surfing lessons. I design surfboards, I design fins, and I’ve been coaching for over 30 years now. We live on a large bush block inland a bit from Burleigh Heads with all sorts of wonderful native animals—koalas, lizards, and the occasional kangaroo. Like I mentioned, that’s my new thing. Speaking kangaroo.

AP I see. I’ve got kangaroos around my house too. They’re doing a lot of mating at the moment…
do they listen?

CH No [amid laughter and conversation from an approaching group of customers]. They don’t always listen. Can you just hang there for a sec? I just have to sort these guys out. [The phone is again rested on the roof of a car and I’m privy to a conversation between Cheyne and a group of German tourists, who want to try paddle boarding for the first time. Cheyne quizzes them on their swimming ability, politely asks them to sign waivers, adds that he’ll throw in an extra 20 minutes, free, because it’s such a beautiful day, then sends them on their way, to Tony. “Aloha guys, have a beautiful day.”] Okay, where were we?

AP Your life all seems quite normal stacked up against how you were portrayed back in the day. What’s your take on how you were portrayed in the media?

CH That varied a bit. Initially I think I had a bit of trouble with some of the guys not really understanding my whole trip. But I think the U.S. gave me a good run, except for when Tommy Curren started to come on strong. Then they just tore into all the Aussies. It was funny, though, thinking back on it. When I was living in the U.S. for a while, they started to get things right. But for different periods there, it was all bullshit and they got things completely wrong. A lot of the things they thought I was on about, they were nowhere near it.

AP You have such a happy disposition though. Is that just a matter of having a thick skin?

CH Sure is, but perhaps even more so it’s just a matter of learning not to worry about it. Just worry about what’s in front of me. Live for the now and all that good stuff.

AP Stacked up against most of the other guys of that era, you certainly seemed like the poster boy for that kind of thinking. 

CH Well it’s certainly not easy to be different, and it’s not easy to be new, but I’ve taken that route my whole life and it’s such a beautiful road. I like a fresh path, I don’t even like to walk on my own path over and over. I get bored. 

AP Well, if we were to apply that same way of thinking to Martin Potter and Mark Occhilupo, they, I guess, walked their own path for years. Then they just buckled down for one year, played the system, and walked away with a world title.

CH Yeah.

AP Do you think you could have done that? Just played the system for one year?

CH Oh for sure. I could’ve played the system for 10 years and, if I was on the tour now, that’s what I would do.

AP Where did this whole sense of adventure and experimentation come from for you?

CH Dunno, to tell you the truth. I was 13 when I shaped my first fin out of plywood and that sort of unlocked it all. I haven’t stopped tinkering and thinking about things since.

AP You grew up in Bondi. Was there a lot of experimenting with boards back then?

CH Maybe, but I was just doing my own thing, looking at books and stuff. I had a lot of interest in the navy and what they were doing with the design of their ships and hulls. Then I ended up learning a lot from guys like George Greenough, Reno Abellira, Barry Kanaiaupuni, and Ben Lexcen [the late, iconic Australian yacht designer who famously collaborated with Horan to design the star fin he rode to victory over Tom Carroll at Bells Beach in 1984].

AP Speaking of fins, you’ve got a new line out that essentially look like your old star fin without the keel—but foiled on both sides. What’s the thinking there?

CH It’s a design I originally worked on with Ben and, yeah, they’ve got a double foil like the wing on a fighter jet. Usually with surfboard design, it’s always been the wrong way around. In the old days, it was the wide nose and narrow tails. But the wide tails had to be underneath where you were standing. Now think about the fin, which only has the foil on the outside. Say you’re hitting your bottom turn on your right side—that inside foil on your fin, what is it, a foil or a flat?

AP Um, a flat?

CH Right. So you see, you’re not going into your turn on a foil. So if you flipped the foil and have ’em on both sides, the water’s going to flow better off your fin. You could see that at Teahupoo. The guys were going super-fast but struggling a bit with their direction changes because the fins were knifing through the water and not flowing. The double foil concept gives you that same flow and quick reaction time going left or right. There is always a flow of water hydrodynamically around the fin.

AP Peter Townend says he and Kanga slotted you into the Bronzed Aussies after you won an event in Bondi as a junior. What was that whole experience like?

CH They were way, way, way, ahead of their time. PT and Kanga were bucking the system and just trying to get us all paid the right amount of money for what we do. The companies were bagging it and making it look bad in the media but the simple theory behind it was, as long as there was one Bronzed Aussie in a final, it would benefit all of us. Surf companies today are what the Bronzed Aussies were about. I tell PT all the time, “Mate you were 20 years ahead of your time.” It’s just that thing of people not accepting things when they are new. [Quizzed on the topic, Peter Townend reported Horan “broke contract” with the Bronzed Aussies in his second year and that, “It was not a pleasant parting and it probably cost the Bronzed Aussies some marketplace business credibility.” Townend also joyfully recalled later beating Horan in a clutch heat, which lead to Mark Richards winning his first world title. “Who’s to say,” PT added, “if he had not screwed the Bronzed Aussies, I might have thrown the heat. And we would’ve had our second world champion. It would’ve been good for business!”]

AP Speaking of new—you famously rode Waimea on a 5’8″. What was the thinking behind that?

CH That was one of those things where people said it couldn’t be done and I had to do it. I always wanted to ride a small board in big waves and just feel that [liveliness] and freedom. I was sick of being dictated to by my boards on big waves and wanted to be able to position them exactly where it needed to be as opposed to where it wanted to go. Big-wave board design was a pet peeve of mine and it still is. To me, the guns they ride today, the pintails are a ’67 board. Sure they’ve got a modern rail and bottom, but the outline is still a ’67 outline. 

AP What about life on tour? Who’d you hang with?

CH Everyone. Occy, Pottz, Jimmy Hogan, Tommy Carroll. A lot of the new guys would gravitate toward me and I’d show them how to live clean and look after themselves on tour. It was great. I loved how you’d just go toe-to-toe by day, then be brothers once the jerseys came off.

AP Let’s talk about your relationship with Kelly Slater. You mentioned you’d coached him at different points. How did that relationship come about and what can you, or anybody, possibly impart on an 11-time world champion?

CH Kelly and I have been mates since he was 14. He used to come up to New Symra Beach [Florida]. I had horrible boards at the time but I’d just go there to learn to surf small waves. He was just ripping, doing all these incredible airs. There was a light footedness and freeness that I’d never seen before. We got talking and have been friends ever since. The most important thing, I think, has been advising him to stay off the exotic equipment during the contests. Ride whatever you want when you’re free surfing, but just stick to what’s worked best for you in comps, don’t go down the same path I did. 

AP I’ve found it quaint how guys from your era really seem to have taken to social media, in particular Instagram, with a lot of gusto. Mark Richards has a great feed, as does Simon Anderson. You seem to touch on the workings of the WSL a bit. Do you think it’s heading in the right direction?

CH Ahhh, yes, yes, for sure. I like what they’re doing. There’re a couple things that aren’t right but it’s just minor tweaks. I think the setup with the wildcard is messing with the system. It’s not fair that some guy can train for a whole year and get beaten by the local hotshot. Those guys win comps at the break, they know the break, and they are tuned into it. The guy on the tour gets off a plane, has a bit of jetlag, and needs a couple days to get his body acclimatized to the area. So what’s happening is it’s really affecting the guys that are gunning for the title. They need to be slotted in against the bottom half of the draw. But really, that’s about it. I get pretty excited by it all.

AP You eventually won a world title, albeit a Masters title [won against Tom Carroll in France, 2000]. Did that win deliver a sense of validation for you?

CH Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I’ll tell you something about that world title. There’s a whole story about it involving priority, which I’ll tell in a book one day. But I had to win that thing by 3,000 miles to get that title and that’s the way it always was when I was on tour. I was looking at Tom during that final and saying, “They’re trying to cheat me again, brother, they’re trying to take it off me.” But not this time. They did a million times before, but not this time. They couldn’t deny me.

AP Does that kind of stuff keep you up at night?

CH Nah mate [erupts into laughter]. You brought it up. I never think about it. You know what I think about? Making sure my lizard has got food, making sure my dog’s happy, keeping my kids happy, and these people down here on the paddle boards. Keeping them happy. That’s my life and I don’t have any regrets.