Mark Occhilupo – Biography
If Mark Occhilupo’s career was a wave, it would be a west peak bomb at Sunset: A crazy first drop out back draining into a mushy, shithouse mid-section that ends with a rifling barrel into the channel. Literally speaking, “Occy” burst into professional surfing as a mere teen but fell prey to pressure and burnout in a manic display of public self destruction only to rebound, staging the most unlikely and dramatic comeback in the sport’s history. Putting the “goofy” in goofyfoot, Occy broke onto the scene looking like nothing the world had ever seen. The quirky Aussie rode with a low, coiled stance embellished with a heavy back foot and intense bottom to top turn commitment. Perfectly designed for wave riding with a supernatural center of gravity, every part of his body screamed speed and power as he bent his boards deep on rail, nose beyond vertical, throwing heinous buckets, and leaving gouging scars across perfect waves all over the world. In a sport overpopulated with wild characters and over-the-top personalities, Occy was/is one of a kind.
Born June 16th, 1966, Mark Occhilupo first stood on a surfboard around age 7. He told Surfing Magazine that his sister Alex pushed him into his first wave. “It was only about a foot, and I made it to the beach. I was stoked after that.” Those tiny waves rolling into Kurnell, New South Wales made for a perfect start, but he quickly moved to the more challenging Cronulla. Occy continued to improve as he worked through stylistic layers of his surfing, eventually winning his first event at 13. Just a few years later, about to begin his 11trh grade year, he quit school to qualify for the ASP tour. The world didn’t see him coming as he slid into the elite Top 16, securing a slot in the main events for the next year. Suddenly, the teenage goofyfoot with the bleach blonde hair and meaty face was showing up on magazine pages next to Tom Carroll, Martin Potter, and Gary Elkerton.
By 1984, Occy was number 3 in the world when he unwittingly knighted himself Australia’s great hope to cut down American surfing idol Tommy Curren. Occhilupo proclaimed he would beat the “American wankers” in an act of teenage braggadocio or savvy personality branding. Either way, Occy became a hero or anti-hero depending on your side of the equator. Earning island cred, he won the Pipeline Masters the following year and then defeated Curren on his home turf under the glare of surfing’s most visible media event, the OP Pro. Professional surfing had never been so big due in no small part to the Occhilupo-Curren rivalry. Many point to one heat in the 1986 Bells Beach event as the pinnacle of the era: Occy versus Curren; goofy versus regular; Aussie versus American; good versus evil; Billabong versus OP. It was a watershed moment, and Curren took the heat by an edge to win his first world title.
The following year, Occy played himself in a cheeky performance in the film North Shore, while rumors of his hard partying and substance abuse moved from whispers in the lineup to common knowledge. His surfing was still red hot, but his star was poised to burn out. Harnessed with a cocaine habit and a waning interest in competition, Occy faded from the media blaze into a long darkness, a darkness into which he was pushed deeper by his father’s death in 1990 and the loss of his good friend Mark Sainsbury two years later. The laser sharp power-surfer of the 80’s was a memory (but still punctuated by brilliant video moments) eventually replaced by a slovenly shadow 50 pounds heavier and unable to regain his former heights in surfing.
Tim Baker vividly describes the fallen athlete’s first attempt at a comeback in his book Occy: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Mark Occhilupo. According to Baker, on the European leg of the 1992 ASP tour, Occy went on a partying binge marked by all night drinking, an attempt to fight a teenage Kelly Slater, and a heat in which he kicked his board at Barton Lynch’s head. After a beach cleaning tractor essentially destroyed his buried quiver, he headed back to Australia. Reflecting on the events, Occy would later write, “I felt that familiar sensation of losing my grip creeping back, and people were becoming really worried about me. And I did feel like I was losing my grip on reality. “
But over the next few years as the surfing world wrote off the former prodigy, Occy’s new wife (single mother Beatrice Balardie) and friend/ film maker Jack McCoy were focusing the overweight, overindulging Aussie into a familiar form. And by 1997, Occy was back! He blew the doors off the Rip Curl/Surf Dive ‘n’ Ski Super Skins at Bells Beach to rake in $55,000 cash and a $30,000 Jeep. He climbed the ranks of the pro tour to finish that year 2nd to Kelly Slater. Two generations of surfers collectively cheered. The next year he finished 7th and in 1999, with multiple wins in grinding lefthanders, Mark Occhilupo was the world champ.
Although general surfing performance had progressed over the years, there was no substitute for power and commitment. At 33, Occy had lost none of his performance edge. His unorthodox style, at once futuristic and classic, hadn’t changed, but his inner compass had shifted. The once brash, self-destructive kid had transformed into healthy family man. For 8 more years, Occhilupo competed on the world tour before retiring in 2007. In post-retirement, the “Raging Bull” is remarried with two children and is working in an ambassador role with Billabong, a company that owes its phenomenal success to Occy as he was their top shelf personality since 1983. His winning year was immortalized in the film, Occy: the Occumentary (which won Surfer Magazine’s Video of the Year award), and he was inducted into the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame in 2000.
Occhilupo’s career began with a flourish like a sunlit Sunset west peak bomb and then petered out into a sad mushy drug addled mess. But like riding Sunset, Occy picked a proper line and held on through the soup only to grab the reform and drive his way through the most unlikely barrel and emerge triumphant. And like Occy rode actual waves, he rode the metaphorical one: fast and radical. No one has risen the pro ranks as fast; no one has gone backside at J-Bay with such precision and such abandon; no one has come back to claim the title in such dramatic fashion. As he kicks out into the channel of his career, Occy has settled into a role as Australia’s national hero and a traveling ambassador of good will and good vibes. And his surfing, like a wave at Sunset, is forever insane.
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