[ JAMIE MITCHELL ]

UNIDENTIFIED

Jamie Mitchell is the world’s greatest ocean paddler ... and you’ve probably never heard of him

By Tim Baker

Who’s the greatest surfer in the world? It’s a question always likely to inspire debate. Is it contemporary pro tour hotshots like Kelly Slater or Mick Fanning? Or all-round watermen like Brian Keaulana or Laird Hamilton? Or timeless stylists like Tom Curren or Joel Tudour? Or ageless masters like Shaun Tomson or Michael Ho? Or even perennial ambassadors of stoke like Skip Frye or Rusty Miller?

What if I were to suggest it might just be a former lifeguard from Australia’s Gold Coast, who combines many of the attributes of the aforementioned, but whom the vast majority of surfers have never heard of?

If the question was: “Who is the world’s greatest ocean paddler?” there wouldn’t even be much room for debate. That ex-lifeguard, Jamie Mitchell, 30, has won the world’s most gruelling paddleboard race, the Molokai Challenge, for six consecutive years, including two new race records, as well as virtually every other paddleboard race of note in the world. He has only been beaten twice in any paddleboard race anywhere in the world in that time.

But there is much more to Jamie’s act than ocean paddling. He is one of a handful of elite watermen to join the informal 20/20 club - for surfers who can paddle 20 miles through open ocean, and ride a 20 foot wave by the traditional paddle-in method. He is accomplished on virtually every form of surfcraft, from modern shortboard, to Waimea gun, to foil board, standup paddleboard, tow board, and ski. He is one of only two Australians invited to Buffalo’s Keaulana’s annual Big Board Classic in Makaha, a celebration of traditional Hawaiian surf culture open to few foreigners.

Jamie may look like the kind of slim, white, blond surfer boy the heavy, localised Hawaiian surf scene loves to devour. But in reality he’s respected and admired in the islands as a kindred soul who has embraced the Hawaiian ocean-going lifestyle with open arms, like a modern-day Tom Blake.

“I consider him like a local boy here, he’s like us. He’s a true waterman - he does the paddle thing and he tow surfs and he hydro foils and he stands up,” says the great Makaha waterman, Brian Keaulana.

“Paddling’s opened up a lot of doors for me that I wouldn’t have got if I’d just gone there to surf. I’ve been blessed,” says Jamie, who spends over four months a year in the islands - paddling in summer and surfing in winter. “I’ve been very lucky with the people I’ve been able to meet, some of the most amazing people I’ve met in my life, through paddling, not through surfing,” he says. “In Hawaii they really respect what we do with the paddling, whereas in Australia it’s not like that. People don’t really have that sort of respect or really appreciate it. It’s not good or it’s not bad, it’s just the way it is. That’s why I love Hawaii so much ... They’re so at one with the ocean, they’re just trying to find something to do on it all the time.”

At home in Australia, a lingering old rift between the first generation of board riders and traditional surf life savers lumps ocean paddlers like Jamie in the “clubbie” or surf club camp. It’s a curious separation that doesn’t really exist anywhere else in the surfing world - a hangover from the days when the clubbies confiscated surfers’ boards for surfing in designated swimming areas, and boardriders rebelled against the strait-laced clubbie culture.

But Jamie and a small but growing band of Australian ocean goers happily straddle the divide. The sudden popularity of standup paddleboards has blurred the lines and Jamie stands as the leading proponent of the craft in Australia, and a talented all-round surfer for whom such old prejudices are irrelevant.

Yet he still struggles to making a living, earning around $40,000 a year in sponsorship and prize-money, and blowing the lot on his extensive quiver of surfcraft and almost constant global travel. It’s a strange anomaly, seeing as Australia’s professional ironmen can earn good money in a national series of events, a kind of run/swim/paddle triathlon that is televised live across the country. And modern pro surf stars barely out of their teens are pocketing seven figure sums chasing the ASP tour. Yet the Australian surfer most respected in the home of surfing, Hawaii, remains a largely unknown fringe dweller. Paddleboard races offer trifling prize money even to the most successful competitors - the Molokai challenge first prize of $3000 wouldn’t even come close to covering the costs of competing, and a handful of scattered events around the world offer even less. The notion of making a living from ocean paddling is about as far-fetched as it was for the first generation of aspiring professional surfers in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Not that you’ll hear Jamie complaining.

“I’ve nearly got to spend half my wage on equipment and the other half on travel. It’s tough but I could be doing a nine to five job,” says Jamie, philosophically. “People say it would be unreal to have $30,000 prize money (for paddleboard races), but I don’t know if it would be. Maybe we’d lose that spirit and soul and it would become more dog eat dog … Right now it’s pretty cool, there isn’t any ego, and everyone’s pretty mellow … I don’t try and push it on to anyone, this is just what I love to do.”

Jamie grew up in Coffs Harbour, a small coastal country town about 300 km south of the Gold Coat, and graduated through the typical “nipper” or junior surf life saving ranks. Coach and mentor Mick Dibetta spotted him as a promising youngster who briefly threatened his lead in a local paddleboard race, and decided to nurture his talent. “I remember getting out to the first can (buoy) and there was this young kid right by my side. I went, who the hell is this kid?” recalls Mick. “That’s how we met. His dad came up to me and we hit it off from there. There’s a lot of mutual respect.” Jamie moved north to the Gold Coast to train under Mick, a lifeguard and Australia’s top ocean paddler at the time. When Mick first did the Molokai Challenge in 1997, winning the race in a new record time, he came home with stories that captured young Jamie’s imagination.

“I went and did Molokai and told him about it and the runners you catch, better than anything we’ve ever seen here. That excites anyone who paddles. We just started training from there,” says Mick.

Jamie first went to Hawaii in ‘98 and competed in the Molokai for the first time in ‘99, winning the pairs division. Jamie won the race outright in 2002, and every year since, setting two new race records along the way, while Mick continues to finish in the first few places each year well into his 40s.

“I wouldn’t be where I am without Mick. He was the guy who went over there and checked everything out and got everyone talking about it,” says Jamie.

Central to their success has been their knee-paddling technique, initially scoffed at by the purists. “They made a big deal about the knee paddling. The top guys over there said, no one will ever win a race over here knee paddling, it’s more of a sprint thing, which it is,” says Mick. “But once we got the idea of a long distance paddle, we’ve been pretty much unbeatable. I get emails all the time from California and all over America about knee paddling. The design of all the boards changed because their boards weren’t shaped for knee paddling. All the top shapers tried to pick our brains and copy our boards. All the top 20 guys knee paddle now. They have to.”

What is it about knee-paddling that gives them such an edge? “You’ve got that instant power to get on to runners, and when you get on to it you can slowly ease it back, more like surfing,” says Mick. “People look at Jamie and go, he’s hardly paddling, but he’s moving back and forth, adjusting his weight.”

Jamie agrees that his surfing prowess helps his paddling, and vice versa. “I feel like my paddling has helped my surfing and my surfing has definitely helped my paddling, because my paddling helps me to out paddle people and get into certain positions on waves that maybe other people can’t. And I feel my surfing and how to read a wave has helped me to catch certain bumps out in the ocean. The two things intertwine.” How does he deal with the mental and physical stress of five or six or more hours paddling in open ocean? What separates him from the other top competitors when the channel’s notorious current begins to hit and you have to grind out that last hour or two to landfall?

“When it comes down to the crunch, after four hours everyone’s hurting real bad. Who wants it the most and who’s willing to go through the pain? I think that’s probably what separates it,” says Jamie.

“I just have this inner desire. I just hate to lose. It’s not like a dog eat dog thing, it’s like with me personally. Especially after you’ve put so much into it. Everyone’s hurting, just hurt a little more. Just the feeling of coming across that line, it’s just so worth it when you do.

I just kind of go into war mode, me versus him and may the best man win ... I guess I do relax a little, try and get your technique right, try and find every little bump. Especially Molokai. It’s all about catching the wave and so you’ve got to really focus on getting the most out of every little bump.”

Mick reckons Jamie’s capacity to deal with the pain makes him incredibly difficult to beat. “The more times you do it you get used to the pain and your body’s not shocked by it,” says Mick. “You don’t get that same pain in training. We tried to emulate it but you can’t do it. The only way you can do it is experience.”

Jamie agrees experience is now one of his greatest assets in staving off the swelling ranks of challengers who’d like to end his reign. “After doing it for so long, you know what’s coming and when it does come you just go, okay this is it, and just grind it out and you get through it and all of sudden it will get good again. And you know that if you’re hitting it then they’re going to be hitting it. If they’re in front of you they’ve already hit it and if they’re behind you they’re going to hit it ... That’s where it’s really easy to drop your bundle: Why aren’t I going anywhere? I feel terrible? It’s just me ... but you’ve got to get your ahead around it that this is happening to everyone, it’s not just me.” Australia’s most successful ironman, Zane Holmes, decided to tackle the Molokai Challenge in 2005, in an attempt to break Jamie’s domination of the event. Despite a stellar career winning some of the most gruelling ironman events in Australia, Zane came away a broken man vowing he would never tackle the Molokai again.

“I hated it to be honest,” Zane says bluntly, who’s no stranger to pain and endurance, on the kind of 40km-plus, swim/run/paddle marathons he routinely tackles. “It’s still the toughest thing I’ve ever done ... The biggest thing is the respect that race commands from anyone that’s done it. I probably didn’t give it enough respect ... At the end, I was pretty bad. I had no skin on my knees or my feet, just completely gone, bleeding. Just rash in places I didn’t think you could get rash.”

You have to wonder what drives people like Jamie to keep coming back to tackle the Molokai - whether it’s some form of crazed masochism, a sense of history and tradition, or a bit of both. “I grew up doing nippers and the surf club, I was a lifeguard when I was 17. That’s the way I got brought up and I look at all the people, not only from Hawaii but California, like Tom Blake and Tom Zahn. They made they’re own boards, and they paddled the Catalina. There’s a lot of history involved as well. For me, when I first heard about it, it was like, gee, that would be a cool thing to try and do, just the challenge, just to see if we could do that - somewhere halfway around the world, and the second strongest ocean current in the world.

For me, it was more of a life experience, to go over and meet the culture and see what it was all about, and once you do it and once you have that feeling of finishing, it’s kind of addictive.”

And, Jamie stresses, it’s not all about pain and suffering. There are moments out there, somewhere between Molokai and Oahu, when you are literally surfing in open ocean. “It’s a different way of looking at the coast, and it’s a different perspective on the ocean. You learn a lot about the ocean and the wind and the way things happen ... You can get certain runs for 50 metres, but it’s the way you connect them. You can get on one and then take a couple of little strokes and boom, get on another one, and keep connecting them on a good day for hundreds of metres.”

While it’s not as serious an affair, Buffalo’s event in Makaha is the other highlight of Jamie’s calendar and he and Mick can be seen competing in almost every division - the two conspicuous blonde Aussies amid a sea of dark-skinned Hawaiians. “You see everyone riding bellyboards, boogie boards, body surfing, canoe surfing ... I just love that stuff. That’s why I relate to Hawaii the way that I do,” says Jamie. “Makaha’s a special place ... This is what it would have been like 50 or 60 years ago. They’re just doing the same thing. The boards have got a bit more technology, the cars are better, but they’re still doing the same thing ... sitting there smoking joints, barbecuing on the beach, playing ukulele, drinking beer ... same as it ever was, just that it’s 50 years later. Anyone who’s been over there ... It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to get to see that.” Despite Makaha’s heavy reputation, the pair of Aussies have been met with nothing but hospitality on the west side and throughout the islands.

“I wouldn’t have been able to spend the amount of time I’ve spent without people putting me up over the years, treating me like their son,” says Jamie. “That’s been probably the best thing to come out of all of it, the friends I’ve made over there.” Their experience of Hawaii through paddling is completely different from that of most visiting surfers who descend on the North Shore and join the unseemly squabble for waves and photo opportunities at the big name breaks.

“Australian surfers have been going there for so many years so another surfer is just another surfer,” says Jamie. “But we’re a minority. We’re not coming over just to get waves, we’re not coming for two weeks to get as many waves as I can. I’m going the opposite way where I go over in summer and there’s no waves, and they go, what are you doing here?”

Mick concurs. “They took us in and saw that we were the same. They took us to Makaha, when a lot of the pro surfers I know wouldn’t even go there. We’d be nothing without those guys ... We’re lucky to get a look at it in our life time. You can see how much they appreciate you going there. You can walk freely around the place. I’ve never felt threatened, I’ve never ever been hassled in Hawaii, in 16 years of going there.” But despite the warmth and hospitality, the mutual respect, and the debt of gratitude they owe the Hawaiians, Mick reckons Jamie’s reign is likely to continue for some time to come.

“It’s going to be very hard for anyone to beat him,” says Mick. “He’s got the physical and the mental side, and now he’s got the experience. He’s the best.”

JAMIE’S QUIVER

An ocean boy and his toys

A half share in two jet skis (one in Australia and one in Hawaii)

$20,000 plus running costs.

Two paddle boards, at $3000 each. Total $6000.

One foil board $3000.

Three stand up paddle boards at $1500 each, total $4500.

Two tow boards at $2000 each. Total $4000.

Two paddles at $500 each, total $1000.

A quiver of stand surfboards, including two shortboards, tow mid-rangers, and two Waimea guns, total $5000.

Grand total: $43,500.