The Quintessential Martin Potter Story
Martin Potter is the man.
SYDNEY, New South Wales/Australia (Friday, October 7, 2011) – Martin Potter (GBR), 44, is the 1989 ASP World Champion. He has been heralded and berated, loved and hated. He is a statesman – one of the few we have in surfing. He was forged in the fire of the tour’s early cutthroat days and rode to glory on the back of preternatural talent. The man has gone from South Africa’s child prodigy to ASP World Tour wild man to world beater to universally respected leader within the sport. He has survived and thrived on four different continents, and even with all this, there remains lots to the Martin Potter story. STAB magazine has just compiled one of the most in-depth and compelling pieces you’ll likely find on the man we know as ‘Pottz’ with comments from Brad Gerlach, Tom Carroll, Mark Richards and a number of others. This…is their story…
He was a boy. Fifteen. And, over two events in the year of Reagan and De Lorean, he blew a generation back into the seventies. At the 1981 Guston 500, riding a green 5’5″ Spider Murphy twin-fin with an outline of The Saint painted on the deck because his mother thought he looked like Roger Moore, Martin Potter benched Derek Hynd, Mike Savage, Shaun Tomson and Dane Kealoha.
“Can you imagine the best Dane (Kealoha) surfing you’d ever seen and the best surfing of Cheyne (Horan)? Then, all of a sudden, there’s a kid combining the two?” says Derek Hynd. “I remember paddling out after desperately waging a hustling war on this little kid and paddling out in the lead with 30 seconds to go, knowing that if the kid caught anything more than a ripple he was going to smash me because he was obviously a fantastic surfer. And he did.”
Tom Carroll says: “Dane was the fastest guy at that time and he was matching Dane. We were flabbergasted.”
Mark Richards, who would win his third world title that year, faced Martin in the final of the second event, the Mainstay Magnum.
“I’d heard about him prior to…
For full story, check out STAB’s ‘Pottz is the Man’
Comments
Category: All ASP News, ASP Editorial News
He is an american who promotes surfing through greedy corporations, keep surfing all you real surfers out there!!
I worked as Asst. Art Director for O’Neill during the Pottz, Carroll, Gerlach era, and helped promote Pottz’s career, as well as Brad’s and Tom’s. An honor in every regard. Watching Pottz surf Santa Cruz in 1989 transformed the entire surf scene here. He was so much better than everyone. Faster, more powerful. Freaking awesome. I can still see it in my mind. I wish Jeff Hornbaker would put the film he did of Pottz that year out on DVD so the current generation can see whatz up. That is one of the all-time great surf documentaries. I also worked for Mark Price when he owned Tavarua Island Surf Company, and recently did a project with him at FireWire. He’s an awesome guy. I find the malicious comments in this article shocking. They do not resonate with Mark, at all. Mark’s awesome too. Surfing with him shredding Cloudbreak is also memorable. He is one of the best surfers to come out of Saffa, and an icon in the surf industry. I’m not saying I know what happened between Price and Martin, but I am saying that there’s allot to admire in both of them, and there’s always two sides to any story. Chill.
he only wishes he could go as fast as me, my bitch at the bay
thats a rip off from the pottz interview at the surfers journal,copy and paste.
potter is an icon,the real father of modern surfing ,a champion with personality.i wish there would be more like him,gerlach,shimooka,fletcher,archy,at the tour or at least in the scene nowadays.
I loved Potz green and yellow fluro town and country surfboards
So true.
He who dares
Wins
When i was 15, he was older than me, now he is younger… incredible
I dropped in on Potz at Main Beach Straddie as a grom, he was 10m deeper and still passed me on his bottom turn. Legend, respect.