“My ego and my common sense still argue with each other.” For someone who’s spent decades stress-testing the edge of what’s survivable, Nate Fletcher talks about his surfing career like it was mostly something that just happened around him. His impact on surfing is undeniable, across airs, big waves, and board and fin design. And though he carries it like a man overdue for a cigarette, nursing a permanent headache, each sentence beginning with a reluctant exhale, he also seems largely without ego, even as he admits it still tends to argue with his common sense. To muse on the impact he’s left behind is to treat his career as a finished painting, something to step back and admire, as if he isn’t still out there at 50, dragging a wet brush across the canvas. He does, however, admit to being done with big wave surfing, after a life spent learning intimacy with death, including being towed into one of the heaviest waves ever at Teahupo’o, and producing one of surfing’s more deranged frames: suspended for a second, then gone. “I have nothing left to prove,” says Nate. “The only reason I did it was for the rush. I don’t get that rush anymore. At some point you’ve got to ask why you’re doing it. I don’t really care what people think. I helped set the bar, but you can’t do it forever.” Nate has never seemed to care much what people think. He was laughed at for riding colourful boards and for experimenting with four fins, even by Kelly Slater, who later ran the setup in competition and said he hoped it might stand as his legacy. “I like colour,” Nate says, simply. This week, Dooma and Dane talk to Nate about the state of surfing and its drift toward wealthy hobbyists, how he became a pro surfer by accident, the debt he owes his mother for surviving him and Christian, and the generations of background misogyny she endured, the impact of social media on kids, and his continued admiration for Kelly Slater. We also debut a new segment with a WSL insider. Enjoy the episode.
