09 Champs
by Paul Greenland/pics CPL
The annual Auckland Champs went off this year at Maori Bay, with a solid turnout, some solid surfing and solid waves to boot. For the second year in a row, the Men’s Open Division [and Women’s] was won by a non-Aucklander, namely Maz Quinn, which of course raised the same old question, should the Auckland Champs be for Aucklanders only? Well I think to answer this we should start by looking at the history of the event; the AK Champs has always had a stop start existance since its inception, naturally the badges on the base of 500mm tall the wooden board trophy read like the who’s who of AK comp surfing for the last 40 years. In the early ‘90’s the now defunct club Piha Plus hosted the annual championship and enjoyed a huge turn-out. The contest director imposed an AK only dictate- of course this was almost impossible to quantify. Is it ‘cos you’re born at Middlemore or Greenlane? What if you’re
at uni here for 3 years only, what if your girlfriend lives in the 09 so you’re up here every weekend, or what if you work in the 09 during the week and return to the Waikato in the weekends, what if you used to live in Auckland but are work based out of the area... the point is, everyone has a tie somehow to AK...policing just WHO is an 09er is subjective at best..the next year and for the following decade Keyhole Boardriders took over the job, and the concept of AK only was firmly thrown out the door- the notion being to expose AK surfers to the national level of surfing. This worked well and saw some of the biggest fields of competitors the AK Champs have ever enjoyed, it used to be a full 2 day event with 4 divisions. Keyhole made a killing- selling beers out of the back of one of the boy’s wagons for a buck, sausage sizzles and a huge party where everyone who had entered got a free jug of piss and a feed
of fish’n’chips. Ironically most of the champs from this era that weren’t AK residents, like Justin Souter, now are. The deal was it was only fair that the comp should alternate between host clubs and at that stage only Keyhole and Maori Bay had the ability to pull the event off... however each club had their own way of running the event, so each year the rules and style of the event changed...finally in the mid 2000’s Keyhole flew the white flag. The Waitakere City Council had enforced so many regulations and criteria, it took too many man hours to work through the council red tape, needless to say, selling coldies out of the boot and even having food for sale were crushed. Thru the 2000’s the AK Champs were sparodic, but in 2008 and taken out by a true 09er, Scotty ‘rex-muffin-tigsy’ Bell. So, with it looking like it is going to be a solid annual event once again, should it be just for Aucklanders? Well, let’s look at the pros and cons. If it was an exclusive