Chippa doing surfing his way
CABARITA’S Chippa Wilson is a rare breed of professional surfer, carving out a reputation of risk surfing and shooting for the sky.
At 11, his dad bought him his first surfboard from Robbie Johnson, a standout surfer from Cabarita.
Chippa, now 32, has established a solid reputation with award-winning movies.
His Octopus movie was voted the Nikon Surf Video of the year at the recent Surfing Australia Awards.
In Hawaii last year he joined Noa Deane to collect movie awards for state-of-theart, break-free performances.
These guys aren’t the norm, they are surfing’s new underground heroes where movies and radical air moves generate a global following not dependent on the contest calendar.
Although at the recent Red Bull aerials, both were given automatic invitations; unfortunately both failed to qualify in the finals with Chippa narrowly missing out in seventh.
There is now a great debate on the way surfing is being judged: power v air v style.
The judging criteria is slanted to innovation, risk over flow and style. But when these guys go to the air and pull off impossible rotations that you could only dream about, it shows surfing evolving into a new stratosphere.
Seemingly unmakeable situations are rewarded and score higher when defying the laws of gravity.
Some will argue against this but it was kind of ironic that Brazil’s Italo Ferreira won both the air show and the Quiksilver Pro last week.
For Chippa, he has chosen the freedom of expression rather than the grind.
He has the luxury to surf not compete, create his own brand of boards with Caba’s Matt Hurworth or take off in his big Chevy and go camping.
As a former pro junior, Chippa was a contender but he preferred to go big and break away rather than being crushed by the mainstream monotony of pro surfing.
“Growing up I watched a ton of snowboarding movies and I also used to skate a lot which helped and kept me inspired,” Chippa said.
“Over the many years of surfing, I’ve just focused on my own surfing and the rest come naturally now,” he said.
“I think I’ll be opening up the snowboarding/surf/skate DVD box soon when these air events come closer.”