The Best American Sports Writing 2011 by Jane Leavy Read Free Book Online Page B

away from others. But his father refused to concede there was anything wrong. "He never really shared much or let you in, but I figured that was who Clay was," Gino says. "He was always a great athlete, and loved running around to the contests together, the two of us hanging out and having fun. If he had anything, I thought he'd outgrow it. Learn to finally look you in the eye."
    In grade school, Clay was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and consigned to special ed. Jill tried him on Ritalin, but the drug exacerbated his moods and fits, made him a "kicking, screaming monster." Gino, meanwhile, derided the label. "He didn't need drugs," he says. "He needed to mind his teacher and stop drawing waves in his pad." By then, Clay's obsession with all things surfing completely filled the screen. No matter the assignment, each paper he wrote had to do with surfing. At night, he'd watch the tapes that Jill shot of his rides and study himself frame by frame. Then he'd go to bed and surf in his dreams: she would find him moving around but fast asleep, yelling, "Get off of my wave!" "You didn't want to wake him from one of those dreams," she recalls. "He could be violent in that state."
    While Clay's schoolwork suffered, his surfing flourished. As a 10-year-old, he would fly long hours to competitions in California, where he would routinely whip the country's best 13-and-unders. If you're raised in Hawaii and can surf rings around older kids, you'll pop up pretty early on the radar of companies that make board-shorts and energy drinks. "I saw Clay for the first time when he was 10, and offered him a contract on the spot," says John Oda, the surf-team manager for Spy Optic eye-wear, which designs sunglasses for action sports. "He had so much speed and took such big risks that I knew, even then, that he'd be a star." By middle school, Clay had a deal with Quiksilver, and he was winning so many trophies that his parents had to cram them in the garage. Gino chauffeured him to meets and fussed over his gear and sponsor decals, making sure they were splashed on his boards. (Clay didn't like the stickers, which only served to draw unwanted attention to him.)
    At 14—the year before his biggest triumph, the men's open title at the national finals—Clay sent a three-minute tape of himself surfing to Strider Wasilewski at Quiksilver. Wasilewski, who was then the team manager for Slater and several of the world's top pros, screened the loop in something like drop-jawed awe. "I'd never seen anyone near that young be so tuned in to the wave," he recalls. "His mechanics, his flow were comparable to Slater's, but Slater in his 20s, not teens. I thought, 'Holy shit, the world
has
to see this. We've got to book him onto the
Young Guns II
trip.'"
    The
Young Guns
series of DVDs was a breakout marketing tool, showing off Quiksilver's future stars in exotic surf locales. Clay boarded an enormous yacht in Indonesia, where Slater and a film crew were shooting a handpicked group of the sport's best up-and-comers. Pitted against phenoms like Ry Craike and Julian Wilson, Clay astonished the pros with his flying-fish maneuvers, surfing the barrels with such command that he'd slow himself down to prolong his ride. For Slater, arguably the best surfer who has ever lived, it was a kind of a Clapton-meets-Hendrix moment, the jolt of newfound genius. "I didn't know anything about him, but he blew my mind," Slater recalled later. "I don't get intimidated by 15-year-olds often, but he was charging every wave, throwing the biggest, craziest reverses. He knows things about surfing that I don't."
    The video that emerged moved a million units as a promo in surfing mags, and introduced Clay to a global public of preteen surfers. Soon, he appeared in a slew of new titles, signed six-figure deals with Quiksilver and others, and was trailed by groupies at media events, a sex symbol before his first girlfriend. "I'd be with him on a beach, just hanging out