📍Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
1955 – 1975“Shaun Tomson was born in Durban, South Africa, in August 1955, and grew up in the warm, subtropical port city on the Indian Ocean, with its long beaches and powerful waves, with his older brother, Paul, and younger sister, Tracy, in a Jewish family that worshipped at Temple David. His father, Ernie, had been a champion swimmer training for the Olympics when a shark attack off Durban nearly tore off his arm and ended his career, but he never lost his love for the ocean and encouraged Shaun's surfing. Shaun began surfing at ten, in Durban's beach breaks, under his father's guidance, alongside Paul and his cousin Michael Tomson. For his bar mitzvah, his father gave him a trip to Hawaii, where the young Shaun saw the giant waves of the North Shore for the first time. He went to Clifton Preparatory School and Carmel College, and spent every spare moment at the Bay of Plenty and the other beaches along Durban's Golden Mile, learning to ride deep inside the barrels. As a boy he was kept largely unaware of the realities of apartheid, a blindness he later reflected on. In the winter of 1975 he went to Hawaii with the young Australians Rabbit Bartholomew and Mark Richards, and his barrel riding at Pipeline, captured in the film Free Ride, changed surfing. He won the Pipe Masters in 1975 and the world title in 1977, and stayed in the world's top sixteen until 1989. He later moved to California, co-founded surf clothing companies, and became an author and motivational speaker, encouraging young people to write their own life codes.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
🛰️ Satellite view · © Google