Tom Carroll, Tom Curren, Martin Potter and Cheyne Horan boycotted the three South African ASP events in 1985, in protest against that country's governmental apartheid policies. A unique and strange moment in surf history, and the sport's only full-contact interaction with global politics, as far as I can recall.

We came out looking great. Or no . . . we came out looking ridiculous. Both, actually. It depended on where you were looking, or who you were talking to, at any given moment.

Very much on the ridiculous side was the fact that pro surfing, in 1985, was almost the 

 globe-hopping sport still scheduling events in South Africa. The country had been barred from the Olympics since 1964. After 1980, athletes who competed there risked being put on a United Nations blacklist. (There were no legal ramifications to being on the list, but it was like crossing a picket line. Golfers, for some reason, seemed to not mind competing in South Africa; athletes from other sports, out of personal belief or pressure from their organizing bodies and/or governments, mostly stayed away.)

On the plus side, a handful of surfers not only took a real stand in 1985 but presented their case in an articulate, humane fashion. Reigning world champ Tom Carroll went first, announcing at the '85 Bells contest that he would not be competing later that year in South Africa. Martin Potter followed, and because he'd been raised in Durban, Potter's voice carried strongly. "I was at a disco once with [Hawaiian surfer] Louie Ferreira when he got beaten up for chatting up a white girl. Things like that happen and you begin to wonder just what you're doing there. Growing up, the idea of blacks and whites being separated and living under different sets of laws was all I knew. It seemed quite natural. But traveling has opened my eyes." Potter had by then immigrated to Australia. Curren and Horan joined the boycott soon after.

There was a real cost to the boycotters. I'm not sure if it happened that year, but in years to come, surfers who chose not to compete in South Africa were fined by the ASP. It also made for a harder route to a world title. (Although not impossible: Curren won both his titles without going to South Africa, as did Potter in 1989.)

Who was on the other side of the line drawn by Carroll and other boycotters? The vast majority of pros, along with most surfers in general, were on the fence. Willfully uninformed. Surfing was a younger sport in 1985 than it is today, in terms of median age, and my guess is that half of all American surfers barely knew what apartheid was.

But there were also surfers very much in favor of going to South Africa. The most common argument—really the 

 argument—from those on the other side of the boycott divide, was the time-honored sports-and-politics-don't-mix angle. This position was framed with uncommon eloquence by Shaun Tomson. Right after Carroll announced he wouldn't be going to South Africa, Tomson took the stage at the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame in Torquay and gave an impassioned speech about the proposed boycott. "What's the next stand in surfing's newly found political conscience?" Tomson asked in a slightly mocking tone. "Maybe we won't go to the USA because we object to American involvement in Central America. Maybe we don't go to France in objection to the Socialist government. Maybe we won't go to England because we abhor [Prime Minister] Thatcher's treatment of the IRA. Where will it end? If you don't support South Africa, then voice your opinions, but 

 pro surfing. I don't stand here tonight in defense of South Africa. I stand here as a surfer in defense of pro surfing."

That's a real argument. I very clearly recall sitting in my office at SURFER, trying to work out a response to Tomson's position—not so much for the magazine (editor Paul Holmes and writer Phil Jarratt had turned SURFER into quite the little antiapartheid organ), but for myself. And the answer was: you pick your battles. Thatcher putting the hammer down in Ireland, America backdoor-funding the Contras—both issues were as worthy of engagement as apartheid. Except they weren't front and center at that moment, in the surf world at least, the way apartheid was. It must have been frustrating for Tomson. The South African events were not only held in his hometown, they were also far and away the best-run contests on tour. But fate had moved the sport into close proximity with 

 time, and the fact that Carroll, Potter and the other boycotters were willing to ignore other high-profile human rights abuses around the world was beside the point.

Then there was ASP director Ian Cairns, who took Tomson's position and juiced it up with anger and surf-capitalism cravenness. I interviewed Cairns in 1985, right after the tour returned from South Africa, and he straight-faced told me that the boycott "didn't affect the events" (nonsense; every world title contender, save Mark Occhilupo, was absent), that it "didn't affect the tour" (wrong again; every surf media outlet outside of Durban supported Carroll and the boycotters), and that the only upshot of the whole thing was that the boycotting surfers had "missed out on points and money." Politics and principle, in other words, were messing up Cairns' vision of a bigger, greater, richer world tour, and you could nearly see the smoke coming out of his ears.

In a weird, darkly comic place beyond Ian Cairns, there was Virginia pro Wes Laine, who took the anti-boycott stance to its different place entirely. Laine was forthright in a 1990 

: On the whole issue of South Africa and apartheid, a lot of people on tour are boycotting the place. You don't seem to have a problem with it

: I love South Africa. I love going there so much there was no way that I wasn't going to go. I'm not going to boycott. I don't feel a boycott has any impact on South Africa's politics, period. I'm not going to jeopardize my livelihood or miss out on a good surf trip for anything.

Three months later, Laine was about to depart for a regional pro contest in Barbados, a black-majority country with close ties to the anti-apartheid movement. Laine's 

 interview had been brought to the attention of contest officials, however, and word came down that he would not be allowed entry to the country. At which point Laine went through the looking-glass. He vowed to bring down the Barbados event the following year. How so? With a surfer boycott.

All of this came to mind earlier in the week when I found out Nelson Mandela died. I came across an article with this headline: "As Mandela Served Time in Prison, it Took Sporting Outrage to Awaken World to Apartheid." I wonder what Ian Cairns thinks when he sees a headline like that?

The ASP never did pull out of South Africa. Year after year, prior to apartheid's dismantling in the early '90s, the tour just rocked up to Durban the same way it did at Huntington, Sydney, and Rio. I won't hold my breath, but pro surfing owes the sport a groveling apology for standing—stupidly, belligerently—on the wrong side of history.

What Carroll, Potter, Curren, and Horan did by not going to South Africa in 1985 looks even better, in hindsight, because they were under no pressure from their professional organization to do so, like virtually all other athletes around the world. Just the opposite, in fact. Tennis players and golfers got wrist-slapped for competing in South Africa. Surfers got wrist-slapped for 

When Shaun Tomson gave his sports-before-politics speech in Torquay, in 1985, it was aimed straight at Tom Carroll, who Tomson correctly ID'd as the surf-boycott firestarter. How gratifying it must have been for Carroll, 10 years later, at his retirement dinner, to have former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke stand up and say, of Carroll's South African stance, that there could be "no better example in the history of Australian sport where a champion has been prepared to put principles so manifestly in front of his or her own interests."

It doesn't happen often, but you can get down in the dirt of politics and come up smelling like a rose. 

Goodbye Nelson Mandela. Hats off to Tom Carroll and the rest of the boycotters.

BOYCOTT 1985: SOUTH AFRICA'S LINE IN THE SAND

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