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THE 100 GREATEST SURFERS OF ALL TIME


Shane Beschen, Backdoor. Photo: Frieden/A-Frame

Shane Beschen was a relatively unloved surfer. Maybe it was the neckbeard, maybe because he always looked a bit… sour. Maybe because he simply wasn’t Slater. But whatever the reason, he could certainly surf. A perfect heat score of 30 at Kirra in ‘96 (three tens back in the day, not two 15’s, stupid), helped him end the year runner up to you-know-who. But runner- up would be the best he could hope for, and in a pre-internet blog era, couldn’t exactly quit the Tour and remain relevant. Somehow, Beschen was a conspicuous outsider to the New School/Momentum generation crew, despite his surfing very much fitting the mold. Still, a champion of radical, explosive aerial surfing in contests, vs. safe, strategic, 3-to-the-beach tactics, the type of tour Beschen so often voiced for is much more like the one today’s WCTers thrive on.

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