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academia and surfing

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advertising and surfing

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aerial

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alaia board

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Benson, Blanche

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Bermuda

Well-scrubbed regularfoot pro surfer from Virginia Beach, Virginia; world-ranked #9 in 1983 and 1985. Laine was born (1960) in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, the son of a U.S. Marine colonel. He first surfed at age five, then spent nearly 10 years living with his family on military bases in Italy, Rhode Island, and North Carolina, before settling in Virginia Beach.

One of the East Coast's strongest amateur competitors in the mid- and late 1970s—winning the boys' division of the 1974 East Coast Surfing Championships, the juniors kneeboard division of the 1976 U.S. Championships, and the juniors division of the 1978 East Coast Surfing Championships—Laine turned pro in 1979, and joined the world tour in 1982, finishing the year ranked #22. He was the top-rated East Coast surfer for the next three years, finishing ninth in 1983, 11th in 1984, and ninth in 1985. Laine left the world tour after the 1989 season to concentrate on the East Coast pro circuit, and finished the 1993 tour rated fourth.

Laine had a functional and polished wave-riding style, connecting his turns smoothly and always keeping his long, thin limbs in balance. He was particularly skilled at frontside tuberiding, slotting his 6'4", 170-pound frame into the wide-open cylinders at Off the Wall and Backdoor in Hawaii, and neatly folding himself into three-footers at preferred East Coast breaks such as North Carolina's Cape Hatteras. Laine was one of the most brightly accoutered surfers of the period, with hallmark orange-decked boards and wetsuits in preschool color combinations, including a fullsuit in canary yellow and hot pink with black accents.

In his one and only brush with surfing politics, Laine said in a 1990 

 magazine interview that he didn't agree with a recently organized pro surfer boycott against South African surf contests to protest apartheid. "I'm not going to jeopardize my livelihood or miss out on a good surf trip for anything." Three months later, contest officials in the antiapartheid Caribbean country of Barbados prevented Laine from entering a pro event there. Laine responded by saying that he would organize a boycott against future contests in Barbados.

Laine appeared in about 20 surf movies and videos, including 

Older brother Randy Laine competed briefly on the world pro circuit in the mid-'70s; in the early '80s he was celebrated and reviled as one of the first surfers to ride waves on a jet ski.

Laine, Wes

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