Tunnel Vision: The True Story Of My Probably Insane Quest To Become A Professional Surfer

Tunnel Vision: The True Story Of My Probably Insane Quest To Become A Professional Surfer

In an effort to have an answer to the question, 'What are you doing now, Sully?' inveterate traveller and stand-up comedian Sullivan McLeod started to tell people he'd decided to become a professional surfer. Then somehow he was registered in the World Qualifying Series (WQS) and found he was going ahead with his stupid idea. Professional surfing is run on a two tiered system. The World Championship Tour (WCT) is the Dream Tour, the pinnacle of pro surfing. If you want to be a pro, you start with the less glamorous WQS (the 'You're Dreaming Tour'). If the WCT is the major league of professional surfing, then the WQS is the minor. If the WCT is the blue ribbon hundred-metre event, then the WQS is the gruelling marathon that very few survive. So, despite the fact that he was unfit physically, financially and possibly mentally, Sullivan goes into training for his nine months on the circuit, with frequent sidetracking into drinking and partying, but he does actually make it to most of the heats. Along the way - and this is the book's real appeal - he has to work out how to get to the next competition in the next country on his very tight budget, and we get his highly entertaining observations about Americans, Brazilians, the Brits, French and ex-pat Australians, to name but a few. And he has his fair share of mishaps: he gets locked up in a Brazilian holding cell, parties with South American criminals, has everything stolen in France, and still manages to catch the wave of a lifetime. It's more about the journey than the surfing. We do meet the surfers who desperately want to succeed, and all the bit players who make the comps happen, but if Will Swanton's Some Dayis as close as you can get without pulling on a contest singlet yourself, Sullivan's book is about pulling on the singlet, for one hell-raising adventure after another.