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i think if you look up to or hero worship someone your bound to be disappointed at some stage.
be the best you can be and be your own hero- it's more fun
I think it's ok to admire talent when you see it. Hero worship is a different thing altogether I reckon.
As for Tom Carroll I really don't care one way or another what he's done.
How would you like to have come second to a drug cheat
Cheated and he should be stripped of those tittles
I reckon you'd need to be on crack to surf like this
but drugs don't mean you can, talent does. So what another fallen idol blah blah blah. Insert book here.... Let's get on with it, as other have said, not being on it and a pro surfer would be more of a surprise, specially at the time Tom was on tour.
Tom is no better person or have less failings than any other.. He is just a guy who surfed good.. So let's not get carried away with the idol worship at some point they all slip, he was a great surfer and personally I never met bloke so who am I to judge his personal life or habits.
But let's get to that clip... The snap was cool but I always reckoned the late drop to huge pit was the best wave..
Problem is if you take TC's titles away you need to take away Occy's, Andy's etc
There's probably one fully clean surfer on tour, crack down and cancel the tour...
How would you like to have come second to a drug cheat Cheated and he should be stripped of those tittles
I hear what ya are saying JB but anyone who calls amphetamines and coke performance enhancing is absolutely kidding themselves. Sure they might make you feel a bit better and take you to a new place but in terms of enhancing your ability to ride a wave over time - no farrrken way. Absolutely not. Performance enhancing drugs like LA was taking were a completely different story. I imagine that many a surfer would seriously benefit from having had his medical team at hand.
I agree
These are recreational drugs that I just fail to see could be called performance enhancing. I doubt anyone today or in years gone by were taking these drugs as part of a programme to improve their performance they just live/lived larger than life lives with a lot of temptation thrown at them. As Taj Burrow was quoted as saying when the tour comes to town it is the biggest event in the community on the year.
There are parts of this whole drug thing I dont get anyway.
In both NRL and AFL a lot of players get a pain killer needle on injuries so they can take the field.
They do this under club medical direction and basically its done so they can take the field. No painkilling shot and they would struggle. So why isnt this performance enhancing.
Watch the start of an ASP contest and you see the contestants rocking up with a big takeaway container of coffee. Legal drug but definitely a pick you ie performance enhancing.
I have worked with people who cannot start there day without a coffee and then take it all through the day to get them through the day. I often wondered what someone like this would do if someone consumed a non legal drug in front of them so they could "get through the day"
What I am struggling with is this about getting a message out or making a buck out of selling books.
he makes some weird nosies out in the lineup - not sure he does it too piss people off or amuse himself !
Yep, I guess I'm just simple but for anyone to say Coke isn't performing enhancing I'm guessing has not really seen just what that stuff can do. I also just assumed there would be drug testing in professional surfing. Is there? For all those who don't have a problem with this story ( and that seems most of you) how would you feel if you lost to a drug cheat?
It really steps surfing as a profesionial sport well down on the list if drugs are excepted as the norm IMHO.
Tom Carrol two time world champion drug cheat. 
Back to reading Mick Fannings book. Please let him be clean
Jbshack
To label him a drug cheat is to assume he was taking a line going into his heats.
If he was on it at the parties in the evenings then rather than enhancing I would say it would reduce someones level of performance a bit like a hangover the next day.
The great MP won the stubbies and did it after a shot of heroin. I guess this was performance enhancing as he needed it to just feel normal and come out of the shadows.
It seems to me that people who reach the level of performance that these guys reach whether its surfing, music or other artistic performance often have huge personal issues. That fine line between brilliance and madness.
We want our heroes to be perfect but they are just human like the rest of us. The difference is that everything they do is done on a bigger scale.
The day TC won at pipe with "the snap" in the semi was after he had been told by his dad that his sister had been killed in a car crash. I doubt he took anything on that day but his grief took him to a place that allowed a level of performance that I still struggle to comprehend.
Ted the Kiwi
NC is one of my favourite commentators. Very insightful and his analysis of whats going on puts him head and shoulders above the rest.
There is another forum with an ask Carroll thread which is up to 100 pages and his responses to different questions are pretty insightful.
i'm not for drug cheating but talk of stripping carrol is stupid. many, many surfers have been on lots of stuff over those years.it's not like he had a advantage
funny thing is you still hear about huge post comp celebrations going on's like as if drug testing wasn't even there.
surfing and drugs go hand in hand for some reason. the sport is full of it.
cokes only short term, you would be a wreck by the end of a comp. pot is big, but the guys who can't surf without it aren't touring (free stylers) or aren't contenders because they can't cope.
most of it's party time imo
ps al was the saddest thing to happen. he fell of the wagon.it all catches up in the end
JB you could look at it this way, TC was a recreational user during his competitive days but seemed to descend into the realm of the addict when those days ended. You have shown your kids the Storm Riders series and quite rightly pointed out the heroic, courageous and motivational aspects of what these guys do with their natural ability and desire to push the limits. Unfortunately, these same qualities make for "functioning addicts". At some point TC's usage became problematic and I'm sure he did some stuff that lead him to "rock bottom" and to seek professional help. I can see how your opinion of him has changed but if you do decide to discuss this with your kids I think it can be valuable to point out that he sought help and is now living a life that he can "truly" be proud of and in some way I think that these will be his best years. If your kids are old enough to really get this it may be more valuable than learning about his charging big waves and epic heats at Pipe. Good thread boys with some really insightful input, hope I added to it.
There are a few others from here in there as well. Glad Don got his cashola!
Coke and whizz would defo be performance enhancing both give you the ability to focus and create a feeling of confidence...add that extra confidence to a ****load of natural ability and you would be pretty hard to beat I reckon...it could just give you the extra 10% mentally that you need to go extra hard on that wave....pretty telling that RCJ was in some of the shots there have been quite a few quotes about him and wraps of go fast in articles over the years
Tux
I dont know the facts but if was been done at parties etc and not before heats then to me it would be a negative not a positive on performance.
I had heard rumours about a number of the big wave riders and using a substance to face up to the size waves they are tackling.
This was not competition related just surfing f--ken huge waves.
On the calls to strip him of his titles then do we go back and strip MP of his stubbies and other titles for been on heroin ?
To me we are comparing a cyclist, runner, swimmer who with clear thinking and often with support of others take banned substances to gain an advantage. Against this we have a surfer who is partying to hard with no thought or plan other than falling into a hole of substance abuse.
Jesus said "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
Or was it "Let he who has never pulled a cone, cast a stone."
Or was it, "If I just had a a paddle, I could go one better than walking on water."
Or was it, "Pull yer heads in ya judgmental bozos, he's just a man like the rest of you. Everybody makes mistakes."
Here is a quote from Nick C from another forum which answers one of the questions I had.
"The book may help give it more context for you tootr. TC was never a guy who used drugs prior to competing, it was always part of the celebration afterward. That is until it took a darker turn over time. There are connections between Tom's experience and the normalising of heavy drug use in the surf communities of the 70s and 80s, but there are other more personal aspects to his descent into addiction which to me were the more powerful things at work. "
So as I had thought it wasnt about getting an edge in competition but part of the partying going on that descended into addiction.
