THE MOMENT!
SAYS SHERM: "THE BUZZER RUNS OUT. KELLY JUMPS UP AND ALL THE GUYS ARE POURING BEER OVER HIS HEAD... I HAVE PHOTOS OF ME HIGH-FIVING KELLY ALL TEARY-EYED (OPPOSITE PAGE, BOTTOM LEFT). HE WALKS OVER TO ME AND GOES, 'SHERM, I REALLY NEED A HUG.' I FELT LIKE HE REALLY NEEDED IT
STAB: How was it, sitting there with Kelly during Hedgy's heat? (in which Kelly won his 7the title)
STEVE SHERMAN: The way Andy was surfing, I don't think anyone really thought Hedgy would win that heat. But when he came up to Kelly and said, "This ends here," I went, "Whoa, Hedgy means business," He paddled way out the back, sat the farthest outside anyone had sat the whole contest, and he lit it up. Hedgy's first wave scored an 8.5, Kelly jumped up out of his seat, and it was on. Then Andy came back with a 9-something. And then Hedgy just blitzkrieged this left and got a 9,5, But Andy's so lethal, you know, he's capable of a 9.5 with three seconds to go, But then the ocean went flat. Dead flat, And Kelly saw it, He knew. And I go, "Kelly, how much time left?" And he goes, "Four-and-a-half minutes." And then he started hiding inside his shirt, you know, Not only was every camera on him, but there's a hi-8 camera with a digital feed going around the world, like, live TV, I've had 20 of my friends tell me they watched the whole thing online, "Dude, I saw you on that webcast," they'd say, "You were all over Kelly."
What happened when Andy lost the heat? The buzzer runs out, Kelly jumps up and all the guys are pouring beer on his head. He grabs Kliney (Slater's super-caddie Todd Kline) and, I've just gone through my first roll, so I'm just reloading, had all my film in my pocket and was shooting with my Canon 1V autofocus — it was the first time in years I wasn't shooting medium format because wanted to just rifle shots, Uzi style, So, 36 shots down and I'm already reloading, and Kelly looks at me and goes, "Sherm!" He high-fives me as I'm still shooting photos, I actually have photos of me high-fiving Kelly all teary-eyed. It was pure instinct, So then there's beer pouring around and I shot another roll and he walks over to me and goes, "Sherm, I really need a hug." Just like that, So I hug him and he grabs my head, like a full embrace, and he held me there for, like, 10 seconds, I felt like he really needed it, At that point, I wasn't just covering it anymore, I was there as a friend, And it made it that much more special, And then the crowd poured in?
So, yeah, after that, he pretty much became public property, He went straight down and did a live interview for Brazilian TV. Then he worked his way back down to the crowd. All the photogs were right in front and they were tripping on me, They thought it was an inside job. Kelly goes up on stage, puts the trophy over his head, I'm shooting away, and he looks me straight in the eyes and goes, "Sherm, this is tor my dad," That's when I just got totally choked up, I knew what this whole thing was about. It was about his dad, Since he lost two years ago, and he'd wanted to dedicate that win at Pipe to his father and he wasn't able to do that,,,it really wrecked him. So I looked up at him and I go, "I know," He wanted to say it to someone who understood, so that was rad, to be there for him. I'm just kinda hanging around in the back, letting the other photogs get their trophy shots, and he yells over them, "Sherm, can you do wide angle?" I go, "Yeah." So he goes, "Come here," He pulls me out of all the photographers, going, "Let him in, let him in," Then he goes, "Check this out - wide-angle shot. The reflection in the cup and all the people." So, for like 45 seconds, while all the other photographers and a thousand people on the beach ail wait, Kelly has me getting these rad shots of his reflection in the trophy. He does this Director of Photography thing sometimes, where he's, like, producing his own moments.
All the other media shots have you reflected on the front of the trophy, getting the shot while they poach,
Kelly just did me right, It blew me away how much he helped me out. It didn't seem weird, We were friends, To cover this stuff right, you gotta go deep, but at the same time you gotta keep it real,
So, meanwhile, the final of the contest is starting in the water. Yeah, Damo against Victor Ribas in the final, Damien gets a killer 8,5 and the whole crowd turns around and looks at the judges, all just going "FUCK YOU!" They're booing, flipping the judges off and screaming, It was like, "Whoa, this is pretty heavy," Then Victor gets a wave and the whole beach erupts, The judges knew they had to give it up or else there'd be a riot, It was kinda of a back-and-forth heat, nothing super obvious. Then, at the last minute, Damien gets an 8,5. He wins. The whole beach erupts into boos, Really heavy. I'm sitting there with [PCS president] Tyler Callaway and Brody from the ASP, and Damien's coming up the beach, but everyone's booing, Totally weird vibe, So Brody goes, "Go get em, mate, You gotta give him some love," But 've got my camera and film and stuff and he goes, "Mate, I'll watch your camera," I'm, like, "Dude, there's a lot involved with this camera right now," He's all, "Don't worry, I've got it," So Tyler and I run down the beach, grab Damo and chair him up on our shoulders. We're running him up the beach, surrounded by pissed off Brazilians, and I'm screaming, "USA Number One! I" just to fuck with them, Tyler's just laughing, like, Sherm's out of his mind. But 1 could see the end, where the security guards were standing, and I just knew we could pull it off. And there's that ASP photo that's so hysterical, of me and Tyler carrying Damo, Cause I'm not really saying Damien Hobgood's number one, I'm screaming, "U.S.A! U.S.A!"
You look like YOU just won the contest. I had! Money's in the bank. Kelly just hugged me, I won journalistically, financially, 1 did my job, My kid's going to college, Everyone's stoked, It was like, here Damo, you can ride on my back, 1 just fucking won! [Laughs] That's how I felt. My dad has that photo as his Screensaver. I couldn't believe it,
So, wait, go back to France, when you first started chasing Kelly around? How did all this get started?
I, when Kelly won the Boost contest at Trestles, we did some math and realised that Kelly could win this whole thing in France, He just had to beat Andy, And with the way he was surfing, we knew that could very well happen, That's when we decided to do that "Seven Days with Kelly Slater" story for Surfing. So we get to France, I rock up, go straight to the beach with my 600mm, and it's six-to-eight foot, top to bottom, offshore Hossegor after the contest. I'm running down the beach, not even there yet, and I see Kelly drop into this bomb, bottom turn, straight back to the top and crack it backside, So that was the beginning, It's on now. But Andy was out there too, going mental. They were both rigtot next to each other, like, feeding off each other, Andy was not backing down, He was right there, surfing with Kelly the whole time. And we're just there waiting to see what happened next.
So, uh, what happened next?
The contest started, Kelly was surfing good, but it was obvious that Andy was firing on five cylinders, But then he had that heat with Maz Quinn - kinda of a shocker, Quiksilver hadn't really done the math yet, but [ASP Director] Al Hunt walks by and mutters, "By the way, if Andy loses this heat, Kelly's the world champ," You've never seen men run so fast for their cars. They had to get the hats, the champagne, all the stuff for Kelly's victory dance, Now the photographers are starting to swarm; 12 cameras just closing in on Kelly, And he goes, "Hey Sherm, can you do me favour?" I'm like, "Sure." He goes, "Follow me." I follow him around the scaffolding and there's these two young girls he knows, He grabs these girls and he's like, "I love these girls. Take a photo, Sherm." He puts his arms around them and the girls are, like, crying they're so happy, Kelly goes, "I love these girls, every year they come, they've got KELLY written on their faces. It's great." This is, like, 15 minutes into Andy's heat, Maz is winning, and Kelly's decided to run down and do a photo with these girls, because,,. I don't know, maybe he was trying to take his mind off it all, or maybe he was connecting with his daughter, I don't know, I'm taking the photo and the girls start crying, and then Kelly starts crying, and so I'm starting to well up, too, It was a crazy moment. Then we run back up top and, obviously, Andy came back and won the heat, Kelly goes, "Hey, wasn't supposed to happen yet," So that was it, Kelly lost to Damien the day after that and you could just see that he was pretty devastated, "Sherm, I made three mistakes in that heat," he said, He paddled to the wrong place, missed a wave, it just wasn't really on for him.
Full article in Stab Issue 11 - Jan / Feb 2006
