It’s been a flat few days on the south-west coast of France, the excitement of the Quik Pro petering out as the swell disappeared. So it was probably a good time to catch up with Dane Reynolds. Dane had been unceremoniously dumped from the event, two heats on Day 1 in fairly average waves. In a Surf Europe exclusive, we talked to Dane about head spins, dumb decisions and where the worlds best freesurfer, and quite possible world’s worst comp surfer,  goes from here.

How has your trip to Europe gone so far?
Well the first day of my trip over here I had everything stolen, cameras, boards, so that was pretty heavy. I haven’t had much luck on surf trips lately. On my last one to Indo I injured my hand pretty bad, so that wasn’t a good start.
Have you had any waves over here though?
Well yeah, the night before the competition I actually had a really good surf on a sandbar just up from the competition bank. It was really fun, with some push and my board felt great.
What happened in the comp then?
Well for the comp, the  waves were so different, so much weaker and the board just felt totally wrong. My head was was spinning and after the first heat I just lost all confidence.
But you had a chance to redeem yourself against Jordy.
Well yeah, so I went and tried a new board like two minutes before my heat with Jordy and I was like, ‘whatever I’ll try that.’
Was that a good idea?
No, that’s never a good idea, but you tell yourself that it might be the magic board you need. I mean you always tell yourself that, but I mean it felt okay, but I was never going to get used to it. I mean it’s probably a fine board, but you always are better on a board you are more comfortable with.  I always make dumb decisions like that.
It seems competition surfing is all about making decisions.
You know I thought I was making the most killer decision by going the right against Jordy.  I mean it had been showing some promise and I was with Taj and the other guys and Taj was saying, ‘Yeah, yeah it’s starting to happen.’ But the swell was to weak, and there was some lefts and obviously Jordy was snagging them up. So I chose the the wrong bank, and when I did finally go on to his bank, I slipped on my first wave. Even though it was offshore, there’s these wedges that push through it and I kept on getting caught between the energy in the waves and, ah I don’t know, so yeah, you get the picture.

Do you get any enjoyment out making these decisions that competition surfing forces you to do.
Look it’s good in competition when you make the right decisions and you win and there’s enjoyment in that. I really wanted to get through that heat. But on that day I just made a lot of poor decisions.
What now?
Well I have a few weeks in Europe, and it’s sunny, and just want to get some waves. All I want to do is surf, that’s all I want to do.