Re: Rolf Aurness, boards being too short, and the 1970 World Championship surf contest in Victoria, Australia - it just takes 46 years for it all to be recycled…
Aurness was the first overseas competitor to arrive in Victoria, Australia, for the 1970 World Championships. Nearly all of the heavily favored Australian surfers, including Wayne Lynch and 1966 world champion Nat Young, were using experimental sub-six-foot boards. Aurness, riding a streamlined 6’ 10", stood out immediately as the contest’s most polished and precise surfer, and in the six-man final, held in beautiful overhead waves at a rural surf break called Johanna, he won easily. “Rolf was going twice as fast as we were,” finalist Nat Young recalled, “and covering twice the ground.”