A family tragedy has inspired a West Australian grandfather to become the country’s oldest surfing champion.<\/p>\n
Some of John Haddow’s fondest memories are riding his longboard with his granddaughter Mina on his shoulders at their home breaks around Margaret River.<\/p>\n
The 71-year-old was overcome with emotion this weekend when he won the over-70 masters division at Surfing Australia’s national longboard titles at Kingscliff on the Tweed coast.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
John Haddow competed in the over-70 age division at the national longboard titles. (Supplied: Surfing Australia\/Ness Brown)<\/p>\n
He dedicated the victory to Mina, who lost her battle with brain cancer this year at the age of three.<\/p>\n
Mr Haddow said he felt the presence of an angel on his shoulders as the two best waves of the final came his way.<\/p>\n
“The last 12 months has been completely life changing,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It was only this cancer thing when I realised every day is precious. I’m trying to enjoy life because it’s too short.<\/p>\n
“To travel across the country, put it all on the line and walk away with an Australian championship after everything that’s happened recently, it’s just so special.”<\/p>\n
John Haddow was inspired by the memories of Mina. (Supplied: Dea Haddow)<\/p>\n
In an era defined by high-performance equipment when surfers ride boards that cost thousands of dollars, Mr Haddow competed on an old board borrowed from a friend and was wearing an op shop wetsuit.<\/p>\n
His wife, Dea, is his biggest supporter and was on the beach cheering him on.<\/p>\n
“He’s just smashing it,” she said.<\/p>\n
“At the state titles they actually asked for his birth certificate because they thought he couldn’t be 70.”<\/p>\n
Mina fought bravely but died nine months after her diagnosis.<\/p>\n
The family’s heartbreak was compounded by the fact the doctors told them the first round of treatment had worked.<\/p>\n
“The cancer went away. She rang the bell and we thought she was cancer-free, but it came back in three weeks,” Ms Haddow said.<\/p>\n
“It’s not fair, it’s just too little.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dea Haddow celebrates her husband’s victory. (Supplied: Surfing Australia\/Ness Brown)<\/p>\n
They cherished every minute together \u2014 singing, dancing and watching every episode of Bluey “at least 100 times”.<\/p>\n
While nothing can take away the pain of losing a grandchild, the newly crowned champion said the tragedy had given him a new lease on life.<\/p>\n
“Nobody has a promise for tomorrow, so you have to live life and we have got to be good to each other,” Mr Haddow said.<\/p>\n
“A lot of people spend their life with nasty thoughts in their head, but we all live on one planet and we have got to get along.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A family tragedy has inspired a West Australian grandfather to become the country’s oldest surfing champion. Some of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,24492,24494,24491,24495,44,24496,1423,24490,24493],"class_list":["post-24931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-titles","tag-john-haddow","tag-longboarding","tag-masters","tag-news","tag-over-70","tag-seniors","tag-surfing","tag-surfing-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}