Owen Wright on competing against Kelly Slater and life with wife Kita Alexander
Olympic surfing medallist Owen Wright on his unique competition technique, day-to-day banter with wife Kita Alexander and the magic of eggs on toast.
My childhood nickname was …I never really had a childhood nickname but my wife has been calling me Ow-puppy. Some people call me Ow-dog and then she decided to call me Ow-puppy. Now all my mates call me Ow-puppy because my wife put it out there and it stuck (laughs).
My wife (singer-songwriter Kita Alexander) joked that I was a bit of a stalker early on in our relationship because… we’ve had this constant banter back and forth about who followed who and who messaged first. We constantly throw out little ribs to each other about who got into it first. (The stalker remark) probably referenced how we met; we met up in Sydney and then I went to LA a couple of weeks later to see her. I think she just likes to stir me that I fell in love straight away.
The dumbest thing that I do regularly is... just forget everything. If I’m going to take the kids to school, I forget the school bag and then I’ll get the school bag and then I’ll forget my car keys. Just really mundane stuff.
My ultimate post-surf meal is... eggs on toast. I go for an early surf and then come in and have eggs on toast. I’d cook it before I was competing. I had it today. I could have it forever if I wanted to.
When I first surfed against Kelly Slater I was... a really confident young kid. And I was thinking to just totally ignore him and treat him like he wasn’t there. And I managed to do that. Heaps of the older generation always warned me of that. It would have been odd for him to get that from such a young surfer.
I knew it was time to retire from professional competitive surfing when... I got told by the doctors that I’m in good health now and it’s best that I stop because my next accident could be pretty severe again (in 2015 he sustained a serious brain injury from a wipe-out at Pipeline in Hawaii). It’s related to the number of knocks you get over your career. So like a footballer, where small taps start to cause either bad symptoms or you get knocked out easy. I was in that same boat. It’s hard to hear but that’s what was happening. So it wasn’t a thing where I was like, ‘Oh, this is the best thing for me’. I listened to the doctors and wrestled with it for a while and then kind of settled on that as things unfolded. It was reluctant. It wasn’t like, ‘this is the right way to go!’
Looking forward, I’m most excited about... Kita and her career taking off. I got to live every part of my dream. I’m just really excited that Kita can have that chance as well to live out her dream because kids (they had their first child when Kita was 20) threw a big spanner in the works. The way things happened probably sits outside the norm but it’s created this opportunity now where Kita can get back into it and my health can recover. She really played that sound supportive role for me throughout the years that I was on tour and also recovering (from a traumatic brain injury). I’ve been really excited to do everything I can to be that same team member for her.
Freedom to me means... I’ve always had a pretty free life I’ve thought, living my dream, which is good. I’m kind of still living that now. One dream has finished and more dreams are starting. So I think freedom is just living your dreams.
When it came to writing my memoir… I ran some sections by my siblings (brothers Tim and Mikey, a pro surfer, and surfing sisters Kirby and Tyler, a two-times world champion). But I didn’t show them the whole book. I’ve got some copies here now and I’m sending them out. I don’t know if all of them are big readers anyway but we’ll see how they go (laughs). I ran a few sections past Tyler and my Mum and generally spoke about it, but they didn’t get to read it. Now I get all the nerves at once; my family, my friends, everybody who buys it. I’m nervous for that, as well as excited.
Against The Water by Owen Wright is published by Simon and Schuster.
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