RICHARD CHRISTIE
DON’T DREAM IT’S OVER
After many years of climbing the ranks of competition surfing, from the days of competing in local boardriders comps down in Mahia, to travelling the world going head to head with the planets best surfers in the worlds best surf locales, Richard Christie's journey all came together in 2011, when he had a stellar year coming oh so close to qualifying for the elite World Tour. The local and international surf community were infatuated with the infectious character and got right in behind Ric, believing he could go all the way. Then just as he was on a roll at the end of 2011, Ric lost a main financial sponsor becoming a victim of the world financial crisis. Over this journey Ric has learnt a lot about the world, and about himself and is armed with a new found confidence and passion to keep pursuing his dream.
So Ric, after surfing has completely ruled your life since you were a little tacka doing the grom comps and graduating through the ranks, winning the National Title, doing Pro Juniors and then onto the World Qualifying Tour, and coming to a whisker of making it onto the World Tour in 2011, to reach that point in your surfing,
how did that feel? It felt good to get to that point, I put in a lot of time, like you said working my way up through the NZ rankings and going across the ditch and pretty much living in Australia for four years doing the Pro Juniors and surfing with those guys, they're the best in the world so you have to go rub shoulders with them and it was the best thing for me, I sacrificed a lot to do that. Once I was too old to do the Juniors I moved onto the QS, the first year was a learning experience, I didn't do to well and each year after that I just gradually improved and learnt a lot. Then everything just started coming together, in 2010 I got my first third in a QS and that just boosted my confidence and then the following year in 2011 it just felt like I was starting to get a roll on. That's when Billy, Jay and I all started doing well, we were all so confident and we all believed in each other, even though we were also competing against each other and it almost became a sure thing that we were going to qualify, we would go into each event and at least one of us would get into the quarters or the semis. Billy won a comp, and that was just such an amazing time. Towards the end of the year, once again because
I was just finding myself, I got a bit rattled. I had to win an event over the last three events to make it and just put far to much pressure on myself and kinda fell off a bit, I still knew I could do it and had faith in the other boys to do it, but unfortunately I lost the backing, and that just sent me in a downward spiral I suppose.
I'm not sure if you are aware of this, but we found out this week through the ASP that after the changes to the tour and the new points structure they introduced when they cut the tour back from 44 to 32, that after 2011 they realised that their points system was flawed and they made changes for this years 2012 tour. We have been told by good authority that had this been rectified earlier, you would have qualified for this years tour as your event placings had been higher than those that qualified ahead of you, yet weren't rewarded. Also that had both yourself and Jay come up with those results in 2011 in 2009 you would have both qualified in the same fashion that Maz had. How does that feel to be in the right place at the wrong time?
It's just one of those things, and things happen like that and for some reason I've gone down this path which has been amazing as well and I actually feel grateful for what for what I've been able to do and see. And now I'm in such a different frame of mind, if I was ever to do that again I think I'd be so much more grateful for it and respect it.
So financially, we had Jay and yourself both close to qualification, and Paige and Sarah Mason this year who were both on the World Tour this year. There we have four of our best surfers ever and each one of you has lost main financial support necessary to do the tour, what's going on here? Yeah it's a hard one, but from what I see, New Zealand is at the bottom of the food chain, in terms of the major corporations that support surfing and who sponsored us. So when they're going through their financial business they see NZ as the smallest thing they can cut and they just do, and we fall victim to that, because all of these companies are international and their opinion of us is that we are such a small fish, but I don't think that's true. On an international level we are quite respected by everyone, I don't think we are a bad investment at all. It would be cool to see some support from outside of these companies as well, a whole lot of people can benefit from our sport of surfing, not just surf companies. It would be cool to get the government behind us as well, cause I think it's pretty cool for NZ to have us out there representing.
So from what you're saying, there is this pool of finances that have to be divvied up amongst the surf athletes of the world. Are the NZ surfers good enough to compete for that pool against the surfers from other countries, and are they professional enough, considering we all get to see how proactive some of those international surfers are for their supporting brands? I definitely think so, Kiwis are certainly up there with the best in the world, like you can see those girls and they're on tour so they obviously are, and they are both super professional and I count myself as being professional as well, as are Jay and Billy. We just don't seem to get the opportunities, like I said we're at the bottom so we are constantly fighting to get recognised, we're the underdogs. We have to go out of our way more than anyone else, cause for most of them everything is laid on a silver platter.
So what are these opportunities you seek? What do you need? Say you're sponsored by a major company - inside that company there is a ranking system, they rank each surfer on how valuable they are to their company, and people at the top get totally looked after and get opportunities thrown at them. They're in the big team house at events around the world and it works its way down and the Kiwis who are up there are down in the basement sleeping on a boardbag. Like in my situation, I was doing better than any other surfer on my label on the QS, and I still wasn't sure if I was able to stay in the team house in Hawaii and that's pretty disheartening, and all that stuff totally effects your performance. It would be cool cause as Kiwis we are never going to match them in terms of marketing for a company, a surf company. It would be cool if someone from NZ could get behind us and actually make us feel like we deserve to be there so we can feel some more support.
The support that stems from the general public is quite phenomenal, at the beach, at the shops, or while you are competing overseas, you see a whole load of Kiwis wishing you well and following your progress, they want to see you do well, and when you do it makes us all as Kiwis feel proud! For sure, it's amazing how many people get behind us, especially when we were doing well. We were getting hounded and getting so much support on Facebook and through emails, it was amazing, as if everyone came together to watch us, it felt good for us knowing that maybe we were maybe inspiring a few young grommies to try and do the same thing. When you're young you look at it and it seems impossible, but if you go through the steps and you get there it's actually totally attainable.
You lost your major financial support to do the tour, did you see that coming and how has it affected you? Na I didn't see it coming at all, I thought I'd done everything I was supposed to do and had the best year of my life. But it was just once again bad timing with what the world was going through, I think they were hurting as a company, and like I said we are the bottom of the chain. I wasn't going to get any support from international guys and NZ is such a small market so I totally understand why they did it. But there was no warning at all, and I got told just before Xmas and I had around two weeks to find a new sponsor before the start of the tour and obviously that didn't happen. So I started the year with a pretty solid downer, I went to the national champs and lost first heat, and that was my year last year and I'm glad it's over.
So does that financial burden really affect your surfing performance in the water that much? Oh totally, my surfing ability is still there, it's just the mental side of things but it's pretty huge. I had saved up a little bit of money from my contest earnings so I backed myself 100% last year on my own, and I have
a few personal things I have to take care of back home with that money as well, so it was pretty stressful and I've never had to do that, so it was pretty stressful and a big learning experience. My mind wasn't 100% there, I was going into heats pretty rattled, which was shit.
Is having that financial support necessary to do the tour successfully, considering you can win money? It definitely is, because you are away so much you can't have a normal job and you can't obtain a steady income because you have to go away, and no one wants to employ someone when they're doing that, you know. And plus if you are working full time, you're not going to be training, surfing good waves, and you're not going to be doing all you can to make it. I think it is possible to do the tour without one which is what I'm prepared to do, but with support it would make it so much easier.
There have been other surfers who have lost major sponsorship, disappeared for a few years and then come back more focussed than ever, sponsorless and living from event to event having to make heats simply to get to the next stop, guys like Chris 'Davo' Davidson and Mick Campbell to name a couple, and those guys went on to qualify for the World Tour for second time off their own bat. Do you look at it like this? Yeah totally, you just have to dig deep and believe in yourself. And that can come from not having a sponsor, actually realising that it's not all about the bullshit and hype or whatever, it's actually about you and the waves and that's all that matters at the end of the day, and anything else is a bonus. But when you grow up being sponsored and everything is handed to you, you almost get a bit ungrateful for it and expect it, and when that's ripped away from you, you think, "Ohhh I can't do it anymore, it's over!" But that's not true if it's your passion and you still believe you can do it then why not do it. You just have to make it happen. You mention that at times, when it is all coming to you on a platter, you can be a little ungrateful. Do you think that as a young surfer being offered big money contracts at such a young age, and earning pretty good money, would you have handled anything differently that you think could have saved your sponsorship now? Totally, with me just looking at money now, I would have definitely done things a little differently, I'd look at it as an opportunity where I could do stuff like helping the youth and doing surf camps and I'd love to do that without charging these people and do it for love but that's unfortunately something I can't do at the moment, but hopefully one day. You recently started a surf programme to help out surfers that are focussed on improving their surfing, tell us a bit about that. Yeah once a week, I just get a bunch of kids, whoever wants to come along that is passionate and keen on improving their surfing. They don't have to be the best surfer in the world, all they have to have is that passion and drive to get better. I've got a good bunch of kids that come every week and they love it, and I feed off their energy, they're just frothing and they listen to what I say and it feels really good to have that respect from them. I've been doing that for a month now and want to keep it up forever pretty much.
You're are one of our greatest talents to ever step foot on a board, and your competitive international success can only be bettered by Maz Quinn really, and while Maz's career really flourished and set him up financially, here you are working at a surf shop in Gisborne scraping by. I don't mean that in a disrespectful way but lets be honest you were born to ride a board, will we ever see Ric Christie back on tour or any Kiwi representation for that matter? And is it something you still want within yourself? Yeah for sure, over these last six months my ideas have changed, I was over it and was ready to just go free surfing, then as the year progressed and watching comps online that made me remember how I was feeling at the time when I was doing well, just that confidence. I've kinda got it back, I didn't have it all year, and I'm thinking why
not! If I can scrape enough coin together to get over to Aussie for the events there at the start of the year, then I'm gonna do it and I'll go from there. If I do well then I can do another event, then another, and so on. I'll see what happens. But at the end of the day I'm so grateful for having this experience of coming home and working, I got my first job, it's been awesome and I've been enjoying it.
Personally, now you are involved in a relationship that also involves kids, how will that affect your travelling and your level of focus while your away? We are at that period of our relationship where she has faith in me in whatever I do, and she backs me in whatever I do and I'm pretty lucky to have that. I'm definitely not keen to do it how I did in the past, how I wanna do the QS from now on is to focus on events that I know I will do well in and feel comfortable at. Not just travel the world to every event and pretty much just throw money away, because it becomes so expensive doing these events. Then I can be home and be with my family, and also do other things like shoot photos and video in home waters, where I need to still have an involvement, and I don't think me just leaving to go to the other side of the world, I don't think that's valuable to sponsors either, I think it's good to have that home base and be involved in what's going on at home.
You speak about having value to sponsors, is there anything in the pipeline in terms of support or opportunities at the end of the day, having a major financial sponsor is basically comparable to being employed, so what do you have to offer?
I'm still getting looked after by Electric and they have been amazing, and Tommy Dalton of the Boardroom and Lost Surfboards is a legend, he's probably my biggest fan, he makes me some amazing boards, whenever I want them. I feel I have the skills and profile to be able to place a potential sponsors image in front of a large amount of people, but put out there in a positive way. And there is no way I would be taking their help for granted that's for sure, and anyway I think I can help their brand improve in value with any ideas I have then I'll do that. Success also helps inspire others around you in the community and if I can do that then it's a way of giving back to the community as well and it has a flow on effect. People help me and I help other people, so I really hope that can happen.