Dane Reynolds birthday is coming up soon, September 7th to be exact (he's going to be 28 this year- nuts!) and I thought it would be cool to check in with the world's greatest freesurfer (John John still hasn't caught up yet since he's been in and out of rehab the past year and spends too much time on tour).
To start things off, I wanted to point out that Australia has put out some great surf mags over the years. From Surfing Life to Surfing World to Tracks, they've covered some amazing spots to the characters that make up our incredible lifestyle. One of the newest Australian surf mags to hit the shelves is Stab. The just released an in-depth article about the reclusive Dane and his aspirations to get back on tour. You can read it below or see it here.
Stab: Any interest in getting back on tour?
Dane: Ah, I think I get asked that every day. And, I trip out on how often people still think I’m on tour. I trip out on how many people know what the next event is, and ask me if I’m going. It’s weird to me that people are knowledgable enough about the tour to know what the next event is, and they’re not knowledgable enough about it to know that I haven’t been doing it for two years. I might as well be on there. I’m still getting credited the same as being on there. I don’t even know if I could qualify. I’m not very good in s#!++y waves. I’d have a tough time qualifying, probably. But when I watch Tahiti, and then I go surf one foot Emma Wood, I’m definitely pretty jealous of the guys on tour.
What about if they just gave you a wildcard back on? Oh, f*$k, I’d feel so weird taking that with how much work people put in to getting on there every year and all that s#!+. I’d feel like that’d maybe be my last opportunity for doing that sort of stuff, so… maybe. But I’d feel like I was taking the opportunity from someone else. So probably not, actually.
Does seeing John John’s alley oop at Keramas get you psyched up to do tour events? I don’t know if it gets me psyched to do world tour events, but it was sick.
How’d you feel about John John claiming the oop in the comp? It wasn’t ruined by the claim. It was definitely claim-worthy. But I think it would’ve been pretty bada$$ if he didn’t. S#!t, if I landed something like that… I dunno, the best airs that I’ve ever done, it just doesn’t cross my mind to throw my arms up in the air. But I don’t know, if I ever do an air like that… maybe my arms would fly up. I’ve never done any airs like that though, that thing was f$%&*d up.
How do you feel about spots like Brazil or Bells? Is that part of the reason you don’t wanna be on tour, ’cause you don’t wanna do events like that? I don’t know, the waves are fun for Brazil and it’s definitely a necessity to do events in big cities and have a lot of people get to see the surfing live, firsthand. I think that’s pretty important for the tour.
So if you were back on tour, you’d be psyched to do those events? Uuuum… Yeah, sure! (Laughs).
Does the best surfing happen on tour? It seems to have been lately. It all happens live. S#!+, it’s hard to say, ’cause it seems like there’s a Brazilian dude doing a backflip every day or something somewhere random, but it comes up on the internet in low resolution and in a way that doesn’t have much impact. I don’t know how that relates to the tour but y’know, I felt like at Teahupoo that was the best tuberiding I’ve ever seen. Every single guy was getting behind the foamball on every wave. You can’t really do that freesurfing, ’cause you’ll be trying to battle with 40 dudes out there trying to catch a wave. It’s pretty nice when you’re in a heat and you can just position yourself as deep as you want and not have to worry about fighting for it or someone getting in your way. When I was still competing, I felt like a lot of the time I would maybe not do the best thing I’d ever done, but surf nearly my best in heats, purely because I was able to get a lot of waves and not have to worry about people in the way or shit like that. You can get in rhythm when you’re catching lots of waves.
You’ve also said that you just wanna be pushing your surfing and that’s why you enjoy doing the events, huh? Yeah.
Are you afraid of failure? Oh yeah, of course. Definitely, f’sure. With everything, not just surfing.
On a scale of 1-10, measure your confidence of success at Lowers. S#!+, I don’t know. I guess, since I said “I don’t know” maybe that’s definitely not in the high range. That’s automatically at least less than a five. I’m gonna try my best. I’ve been trying to eat right and not drink. I mean, not train, but just not be a lazy fat-a$$. Well, I was never lazy, but I just have a sweet tooth and like junk food n’ s#!+. So I’ve been trying to eat right and exercise and get back to, uh, athletic shape (laughs).
This is quite weird. I saw your Instagram. How’s that one guy writing on your Instagram, going f'in mad. Oh yeah, that’s pretty funny. I think I wrote that so cryptically that people didn’t know, like… I’m not expecting results in three days, and I’m not training or anything, I actually am just trying to get fit though. So I was like, “How do you live like this?”
It’s boring isn’t it? Yeah, I just wanna eat a pizza.
You don’t measure success at an event by winning or losing, do you? I always felt pretty happy with my performance if I just felt like I surfed my best. If you have an 18-point heat and still lose, you still feel pretty good about yourself
On that note, I hope Dane makes it back on tour. Could you imagine a quarterfinals with Kolohe, Dane, Medina, Kelly, Julian, Jordy, John John, and Josh? There'd be more tweaked out and bigger airs than a Kai Neville film.
Ran across this clip today on Quiksilver's site. I think it's from last year's France contest. Lots of frothy wonky barrels.
Dane and the website What Youth also put together a short film towards the end of 2012 that you may have missed- but shouldn't have- as Dane does his usual 'blink and you miss it' man turns. Above is the trailer which doesn't show much- so check out the full length clip here. You'll be glad you did.
