JAY THOMPSON

 

 

HISTORY:
Jay Thompson once told Australian journalist Ross Curtis the secret of his grommet motivation: "The boys are either watching from the water or from The Shed, so if you're surfing like a kook everyone gives you shit."

Long before there was Billabong, The Stubbies contest or anything else, there was the Burleigh Boys, a fiercely proud network or blokes who made the fabled headland their own, protected it from bastardization and dealt out stern measures to rude interlopers. Hanging in the barbecue shed they fostered their own progeny and still do.

The Burleigh Family, which had sprouted the likes of Rick Nielsen, Peter Drouyn and Peter Harris, also sprouted Jay Thompson.

Jay ("Bottle") and his brother Vaughn ("VT") were soon schooled by their elder masters in riding as deep as possible inside heaving Burleigh Cove sand caverns, and leaving deep flowing burns across the walls, the things that mattere. As Bottle recalls today, "You learn to make waves count."

Thus he grew up solid with an uncompromising style in the water and, on land, his demeanour was aptly described by Transworld as "a deadest legend who'd buy you a beer with his last two bucks."

PRESENT DAY:
Bottle was picked up by Doug Spong's Cult label, also based in Burleigh, but difficulties led to a change of camps and Bottle joined Bobby Martinez and Ben Bourgeois at the Reef stable.

He celebrated at home by winning the annual Burleigh Single Fin classic, where on a vintage shooter, Bottle showcased his power roots by taking down fellow finalists Elko and Hoyo in six foot sand spitters.

He did it again soon after, romping home, again in solid surf, to take the Newcastle WQS, and the floodgates burst open, leaving him third on the qualifying circuit at year's end.

Although sharp and lively in under-head slop (from four years chasing qualifying points), it's times when the swell has its volume knob turned up to 11, when this style master is at his most brutal.