MAGIC CARPETS

Four legends, four magic carpets.

Cheyne Horan

Matt Hoy

Joel Parkinson

Craig Anderson

Everyone has had a magic carpet. It’s that board that just goes, that just feels right. It’s a board you can trust, a board that inspires confidence, and, with it, performance. A magic carpet is the board that gets you up before dawn and into a wet wetsuit under a howling offshore. The board that tells you to put in that extra stroke and go on that one you thought you were a little too deep … only to come screaming out the other end with your head in your hands and a gust of spit. We had four Australian surfing legends from four very different eras of surfing recall a board they will never forget.

CHEYNO

TOWN AND COUNTRY GLEN MINAMI THRUSTER 7’7” x 18^¼” x 2^½”

The first board that really springs to mind was the one I won the Billabong Pro (Sunset Beach) on, and that whole quiver. I got third in the Pipe Masters on that board—nearly won Pipe (I just couldn’t find a wave in the final)—the board went insane at Pipeline. It was a 7’7”, Glen Minami, rounded pin, made at a time when boards were really wide, but I went really narrow. I’ve still got it today and it’s just a magic board.

A lot went into it. We focussed on having boards with a bit of a difference. It was a little thinner than I was used to and a little narrower, which made it really sensitive and easy to put it where I wanted in big waves because you had that push behind you. It made for really late drops and surfed really good in the pocket at Sunset and it went great at Pipeline.

The best it ever went was against Mike Latronic, who was from Sunset, and it was in the semi-finals of the Billabong Pro there. He was on fire at the time. He’d been surfing Sunset all his life, but he’d always have things go wrong in contests; he’d get caught by a set or something. That happened his whole career.

It was one of those situations where whoever won between him and I was going to win the contest, and I had one barrel in that heat where I remember inside the barrel the face went really hard and really smooth. Because the board was so narrow in the tail, it just held in like a dream and I was able to weave through the barrel and come out a big doggy door at the end. I ended up getting a perfect ten. That was probably the best wave I ever caught on that board. It was a phenomenal wave and it won me the semi-final. After that I just