Ben Player

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Ben Player Ben is the current 2006 World Champion. He is known for his flawless bodyboarding style and massive charging. His victory came after placing second (narrowly being defeated by Damian King) in the 2006 Pipeline final. He has finished #2 overall on the world bodyboarding tour several times. Ben now also helps run Movement Bodyboarding Magazine.

The BEN PLAYER story

The Shark Island Challenge is Australia’s richest bodyboarding competition, bankrolled to the tune of $120,000. But as they say, money can’t buy love – or, as was the case in July 2005, wave action. When the month-long waiting period ran out without a hint of swell, organisers were forced to put the outcome in the hands of competitors. And so the first stop on the World Bodyboarding Tour would be decided by a vote: either split the prize money and the championship points evenly between all competitors, or run the comp in the puny swell benignly flopping over a rock ledge usually famous for its forbidding risk to life and limb.

“I just thought, ‘You fools, this is what we do’,” says Ben Player, one of only two pro riders who voted to compete. At 28, he sensed his chances of ever winning a world title receding with each hand raised in opposition: he had fancied his chances at the infamous Island.

Retreating to his car, he broke down and cried, angered and frustrated by his peers’ reluctance to man up at a spot that has always rewarded the brave. He paddled out anyway, an overt display of defiance against the group’s decision - albeit a failed one. “I ended up cutting my hand pretty badly on the reef. It wasn’t rideable at all …”

Six months later he was in Hawaii in January 06 for the final stop on the world tour. The irony of that frigid afternoon in Cronulla didn’t dawn on Player as he paddled out in flawless, two-metre waves for the final of the Pipeline Pro; he was too preoccupied with matters at hand. After further tour stops in Chile, Portugal and Maui, the two riders left in the hunt for the 2006 crown were the same pair who had voted in favour of going ahead at Shark Island - Ben Player and Queenslander Mitchell Rawlins. With Rawlins knocked out in the quarters, Ben needed to place at least second in the final to realise his dream of becoming world champ.

His surfing in that 30-minute final was truly world class, combining clean barrels with solid boosts. Ben opened up a lead early that he would hold on to through to the siren. Not just the master of Pipeline, but champion of the world ...

Then, further controversy. In the hazy, backlit conditions of the late afternoon, it was revealed that the judges had confused the riders, awarding Player the points for a ride his opponent had made. Scores were hastily revised, then the gutting news: Player had been relegated to runner-up, just moments before he was due to be presented with the Pipeline trophy. The confusion soured the occasion. But Ben Player was bodyboarding’s newest world champion.

This month Player returns to Hawaii to defend his title. No such contest debacles this year, which means Ben Player is more ambitious than ever to win it clean. And again it will all come down to Pipeline, where his performances every winter since he first arrived as a wiry 16-year-old have made him a stand out, no matter what surfcraft you favour, as even the greatest surfer on the planet will attest.

“Ben gets a fair share of respect from the crew there,” says Kelly Slater. “He doesn’t really say all that much but seems to get the job done right. He has a good eye for how to ride a wave. A great surfer is a great surfer, no matter what they ride.”

That wiry frame has filled out during the 13 seasons he’s spent hassling for waves amongst the hungry pack of board riders who converge on the famous stretch of sand every northern winter. He shares physical traits with his brother Toby, also a pro bodyboarder and half the reason why the name Player has been tattooed on everything bodyboarding since the sport’s boom days of the mid-1990s.

“You can’t help but be competitive with your brother,” Ben says of their early years riding the wedging peaks of Whale Beach, on Sydney’s northern beaches. As the younger sibling, Ben was constantly surfing with guys his senior, something he feels refined his talent and drive. “The fact Toby was more popular than me just made me even more competitive.”

In fact Ben Player’s biography reflects the twists and turns of the phenomenal growth of this comparatively new sport. Player won Australian titles as a cadet (under-16s) and as a pro in 2000, part of the new generation that reshaped bodyboarding in Australia. This crew put new emphasis on style and fluidity in big moves and heavy situations, keeping their bodies and legs tight and in control through monstrous airs, milking power out of the pocket of the wave – the bowl that forms in front of the barrelling section. His progressive riding and surfer-good looks made him the complete package, but at 24, when he might have been cashing in, his seat at the head of bodyboarding’s table was kicked out from under him. At the start of the new millennium, surf brands began pulling out of bodyboarding.

“Three years ago I lost both sponsors on the same day. [Surfwear label] Quiksilver totally pulled out of bodyboarding and the company distributing Morey boards went bankrupt, so of course my contract went bust. Basically I lost $85,000 for that year and $35,000 that was owed to me,” says Player.

Player pinpoints Mike Stewart – the undisputed guru of bodyboarding who had pioneered the sport – for kick-starting an era of self-reliance and self-belief, backed by his call to “support those who support bodyboarding”. A kind of evangelistic patriotism swept through the sport. First came the launch of bodyboard-specific clothing brands, then wetsuits and accessories. Now bodyboarding specific stores have opened to cater for the newly independent industry. “The sport is in a much better position now,” Player will tell you. “It’s still growing, but with the money remaining in bodyboarding.”

The thought of quitting never entered his head. “It was more a question of ‘How am I going to make ends meet?” He’d always harboured a creative streak, was an avid scribe within the sport and a self-taught graphic designer … The answer seems obvious now: Player pooled the last of his savings with a couple of friends and launched a magazine.

“The only other bodyboarding magazine on the market was aimed at a young teenage audience, and here I was 20-something and I couldn’t relate. I wanted to make something I could show people and say, ‘Hey, this is what I do.’”

For the first two years Player sold advertising for the mag, which was named Movement. It now employs four people (yes, including this author). Player’s been able to step away from the day-to-day business, but the magazine is a venture that will keep him firmly rooted in the sport. It has even re-energised his passion for the sport. “The more I worked on Movement the more stoked I became on bodyboarding again.”

As the street cred of bodyboarding evolved, so did the dynamics of the sport. Bodyboarders now seek out the sort of aquatic slabs breaking in shallow water that stand-up surfers leave alone. “On a bodyboard you can handle much steeper situations. Being prone means you can ride over very shallow, ledging reefs, sometimes just inches deep, where you won’t get knocked off by steps in the wave.”

This extreme element comes with heavy consequences. During a contest in Tahiti a few years ago, Player pulled into a barrel that shut down on him. When he finally came up for air, he was bleeding from both ears from the sheer pressure exerted by the imploding wave.

“I think surfing actually embraces bodyboarding much more now, because it’s not really seen as competition – we’re something totally different,” he says. “We’re surfing our own waves and we’ve got our own industry.”

The revamped world tour now showcases the sport at surf breaks that suit the craft. Shark Island is one of the best examples of this, the shallow rock bottom creating a warping barrel with an ideal end section which allows them to launch into aerial manoeuvres. The contest site in Chile is similar, though a true peak that barrels both ways. Then there is Hawaii’s Pipeline, the ideal of perfection whether you’re standing up or lying down.

Portugal is the exception on the tour, a playful beach break, but it retains its status on the tour due to the carnival atmosphere that the sport attracts in Europe, as well as in South America. In Australia, the majority of top pros tend to remain nameless outside the sport’s domain; in Europe they are feted like rock gods, mobbed by adoring fans wherever they go. The organisers of the world tour – now chaired by Mr Bodyboarding himself, Mike Stewart – say they aren’t done yet with their expansion, but they’re certainly got the sport on its feet … so to speak.

But for now the eyes of the bodyboarding world are again squinting out towards the chunk of lava that lies submerged off the North Shore of Oahu. Mixed results on tour this year have Ben Player trailing on points in the race for the championship title, but he’s been in Hawaii for two months honing his act in preparation for his world title defence in mid-to-late January. If the waves stay away and the top pros had to vote their champion in, you could count on Player power winning the day.

Movement Magazine Ben Player profile Image:[Image:[1]]