End of an era for Maz

NEXT GENERATION: While his competitive surfing career may be over there will be no seperating Wainui's Maz Quinn from surfing itself. Going full circle he has been passing on some invaluable surfing knowledge to his seven-year-old son Cooper, like his father did to him when he was 10. Picture by Paul Rickard

After a New Zealand competitive surfing career of 26 years, Gisborne surfing's poster boy Maz Quinn is hanging up his competitive rashie. From his first surf at Roberts Road (Waikanae Beach), to charging "terrifying" tubes at Tahiti's Teahupoo break and surfing with the biggest names in the sport, Maz's career has been one big highlight. But while his competitive career may be over, 'the surfing passion will never die'. Michael Neilson reports . . .

The National Surfing Championships at Piha this month were missing one of Gisborne’s surfing sons, a surfer whose feats made him a household name in New Zealand.

Maz Quinn retired from competitive surfing this year, after competing regularly in the national championships since he was 14, and in the open men’s division since he was 18.

“It is not a huge change, but I always said to myself I’d step down if the fire stopped raging in my belly,” says Maz, who learned to surf at the age of 10 at Roberts Road, Waikanae Beach.

He has four open titles to his name, at Gisborne in 1996 and 2000, and at Piha in 2004 and 2006. But it was his qualification for the World Championship Tour (WCT) in 2001 — the first Kiwi to do so — that thrust him, and New Zealand surfing, into the national limelight.

For some, his retirement from competing on the New Zealand surfing circuit won’t come as a big shock. While he is still at the top of New Zealand surfing — regularly winning contests and making finals — his last New Zealand national title was in 2006, and he retired from competing internationally in 2009.

Yet these days, with most people watching surfing in online videos, competition results are not everything. His regular videos of pumping barrels and signature backhand snaps show the 40-year-old has still got it. After all those years of competing, he is looking forward to a break and does not have too many plans from here.

“That is for me to decide in the next phase in my life,” he says.

But it will definitely include spending more time with his son Cooper, 7, and getting him into surfing.

“He is into it some days, some days he is not so much.”

Cooper has time though, as Maz didn’t start surfing until he was 10, with his dad as well.

“I got given an old board from Dad’s mate Murray Weir, a five-foot-eight kneeboard,” says Maz. “It was super wide and buoyant and really easy to learn on.”

But it was the family move to Wainui when he was 12 — to Murphy Road at the “T junction” with Cooper Street, the street he named his son after — that would go on to make Maz synonymous with the “golden mile” of Wainui Beach.

During his teenage years, he surfed Cooper Street and Stockroute every day after (and often during) school with a group of friends around his age, a who’s who of Gisborne surfing — Chris Malone, Steve Roberts, Blair Stewart and Damon Gunness, among others. Right away he was competing, first in school competitions and then on the national circuit.

“From about 12 or 13, I knew all I wanted to be was a pro surfer.”

In his first nationals competition in Piha at the age of 14 he came third in the under-16 boys.

“It was a good first trip and it kicked off my career in New Zealand.”

He picked up long-time sponsor Quiksilver when he was 15.

“I started doing all of the New Zealand competitions and that year, 1990, I went to Bali for the first time for the World Scholastic Championships.”

He returned each year after until in 1994 he got second in the under-18 boys’ category, his first big international result. Meanwhile, on the New Zealand scene, he went from strength to strength. In 1992 he won the under-16 boys’, his first New Zealand title, and in 1996 he won his first open men’s national title, both at Wainui Beach.

“It is always nice to win at your home break, surrounded by friends and family.”

He spent 1996 in Australia, winning the Australian Billabong Junior series — the first non-Australian to win it — before going to the World Pro Junior final in France and coming second to Taj Burrows. That year he also came second in a World Qualifying Series (WQS) contest at Raglan.

“1996 really started my professional career in a big way. It was a good feeling, but to me those results were just more steps forward.”

Apart from Raglan it was a “horrendous” year on the WQS — the precursor to the WCT, the world’s elite surfing series.

“It was quite a step up and an eye-opener.”

In 1999 he won his first WQS event in Anglet, France.

“The waves were pumping. It was so much like Wainui, with really nice lefts and a good four-foot swell. I beat a whole lot of people I looked up to — Rob Machado, Cory Lopez and Todd Prestage in the final. I also beat Tom Curren in the semi. It was a huge deal, a massive contest. I was the first Kiwi to win a WQS event. I had a whole lot of mates on the beach too, which made it even better. Winning that and my first open title are definitely some of my career highlights.”

He ground away a couple more years, before his career-defining year of 2001.

“I didn’t have the best start to the year. Then I got fifth at one competition in Durban, 17th at the US Open, two thirds in France, then I had qualified for the WCT and it was only halfway through the year. I got to make the phone call I had always wanted to make as I was growing up . . . to tell my parents I qualified.

“It was a dream come true right there. Then I went to Hawaii, got another good result and got on a roll. Everything just fell into place. The WCT was another step up though. It was pretty hard.”

Maz started strong, placing fifth in the first event, the Quiksilver Pro at Snapper Rocks, Gold Coast, Australia.

“The waves were really good, I surfed well, but in the quarters I couldn’t believe I was there, I couldn’t focus as much as I should have.”

The rest of the year was a bit of a dream.

“We had good waves all year. It was amazing. But as a rookie on the world tour, it is pretty hard. If it’s close the win seems to go to the higher-seeded guys most of the time, so you have really got to surf well. Even today it still happens.”

He had a few average results and finished the year in 36th place, not enough to requalify.

“It was pretty hard to swallow. But it was an amazing year, if not the best of my life. We got massive waves at Teahupoo in Tahiti. It was huge, I was crapping myself. It was 10-foot plus, almost unpaddleable, but I ended up getting a 9.5 (out of 10) on a wave in my heat. It was one of the best barrels of my life.”

Surfing the infamously shallow, sharp and heavy reef-pass of Teahupoo was “pretty hard”.

“But when you have got about 40 boats in the channel yelling at you to go, you just have to. To get respect from your peers, you have to put head down and go.” He also got to surf with some of his idols that year.

“It was good to surf with Kelly Slater, and Andy Irons won the tour that year — he was on a rampage. Everyone was really friendly out of the water, though in the water it was different when competing.”

Through those years competing internationally, he kept winning New Zealand competitions, including a run of nine wins in a row in the surfing series. Now he has decided to wind down competing to the “odd competition”. He wouldn’t confirm if he would compete at the Nationals if held in Gisborne next year. He hopes to have inspired the next generation of Kiwi surfers.

“In coming from small-town Gisborne and making it onto the world stage, I hope to have inspired young and old, to try to do the same thing. It is possible, wherever you come from.”

He has high hopes for the future of Gisborne, and New Zealand, surfing.

“In Gisborne there is a really good generation of young surfers coming through. In New Zealand the surfing scene is good. We have the pro series and junior series all way down to under-14. They are good stepping stones.”

For those wanting to make it to the top they have to believe in themselves and get on a roll.

“Like Ricardo Christie did when he qualified. It is pretty hard though. There are so many hungry guys out there, but they just need to want it more.”

While he is stepping down from competing, it is not really a great change to his life.

“I will still be surfing, going on trips, doing video clips and photos, still making money off sponsorship, just not going out of town to compete so often. My goal has always been as I get older to still surf to the best of my ability. I do other things to keep fit as well, but I get in the water as much as I can. The passion for surfing will never die, until I die.”

He has no plans to go anywhere, yet.

“We are spoiled with beaches here in Gisborne. It is the perfect surf town. It does get crowded in summer, but in winter I have to find somebody to go surfing with.”

Some of his favourite spots are up and down the East Coast, and in the Coromandel and Mahia. He doesn’t mind the cold either.

“Down Dunedin way, they are so spoiled. It is cold but pumping.”

But even having surfed all around the world he says you can’t beat Wainui Beach.

“When the waves are good here, I don’t go anywhere.”