By Howard Rich
Tom Carroll logged an impressive 15 years full time on the professional surfing circuit, claiming victory on every continent, including back-to-back world titles, before venturing into the surf retail business. Not bad for someone whose schoolteacher told him he ‘would never be any good at anything and, most likely, would end up in the gutter’. “I had this great urge to prove that teacher wrong!” Tom proclaims. I ndeed, Tom has been described as ‘having the ability to make everything he does look deceptively simple’. Many would add that that is the art of a true champion.
Today, Tom, the family man from the northern beaches of Sydney, has a supportive wife and three children. One of his daughter’s happens to be a very good ballerina and it is this profession which Tom believes most equates to surfboard riding. “Watching a good ballerina in action is a bit like seeing a graceful surfboard rider going though his or her paces. To succeed in both disciplines you need to be positive and energetic, and you have to be physically committed to proving yourself time after time.”
For Tom, having a family means being less self-centred, “and having three children has taught me to think outside the square and see life through my daughters’ eyes.” However, the lure of the surf still draws Tom like a magnet, “cracking the waves for fun”, but only when time allows.
Tom is also into tow-surfing, where the board rider is towed-out behind a jet ski boat to tackle the bigger, more dangerous surf. It was while tow-surfing that Tom encountered some of the largest and most powerful waves of his life: caught in a typhoon-swell off Japan. Given the excellent television visuals that can be gained from tow-surfing, Tom has linked with a film crew to make a series of television documentaries, including travelling to South Africa, in particular the Cape of Good Hope on that country’s south-west tip. It was there that Tom encountered large seals and great white sharks.
“It all makes for great television but it was a hazardous experience.” The tow-surfing venture has also taken Tom and his film crew to Brazil and Hawaii. The north-west tip of Tasmania is the next tow-surfing adventure and “probably the most exciting of them all.” Tasmania is classified as the great unknown, a place wild beyond imagination consisting of dangerous banks, sand bars and unique tidal movements unmatched anywhere in the world. In researching the conditions, Tom dedicated his time to mixing with the local abalone fishermen and the community in general, an experience Tom describes as “awesome”. “They are committed and they are passionate – just like I am, I guess – and that’s why we got on so well.”
