Wayne Lynch (b. 1951), surfer and surfboard shaper, grew up in Lorne, Victoria, not far from Bells Beach. A competitor from the age of ten, he won six consecutive Victorian junior titles, and the Australian junior title four years running between 1967 and 1970. In 1969 he appeared in John Witzig's movie Evolution and in 1971 in the classic Sea of Joy. He won the Sydney Surfabout contest, then the world's richest professional event, in 1975, and was runner up in 1978. However, he is remembered as a 'soulful' surfer rather than an aggressive competitor - Tom Carroll claims that 'he was the one Australian surfer of the period who gained complete acceptance from the Californian surf community, for whom soul was uppermost.' After several bad accidents in the mid-1970s, he returned to the sport, starring in the Jack McCoy short documentary A Day in the Life of Wayne Lynch in 1978. In 2000 he founded the board brand Evolution, based in the San Diego area of California; he commutes between there and his home in Apollo Bay, Victoria. He is also an 'ambassador' for the American adventure wear brand Patagonia. Lynch was rated the third-best surfer of all time by Surfing magazine in 2004, and seventeenth-best surfer of all time by Surfer magazine in 2009. (Australians above Lynch on the 2009 list included Mark Richards, Nat Young, Rabbit Bartholomew and Michael Peterson).
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2010
© Edward Sawden
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