Relentless

And yet he remains refreshingly free of the arrogance that some surfers seem to think is a sine qua non of their existence. One reason for this – aside from a naturally easy-going nature– 
is the other sport at which Smart excels: boxing. If anything 
is going to keep a person grounded, it’s the sweet science.

In combining boxing with surfing, Smart is not unique, but he is exceptional. His titles include Southern Area Novice Champion 2006-2007, Western Counties Novice Champ 2007 and, remarkably, Amateur Boxing Association English Novice Runner Up 2007. For Smart, boxing was an almost inevitable choice as both his father and grandfather were boxers. Yet no other sportsman in the UK 
has ever combined two such apparently divergent sports so successfully. But Smart explains that boxing and surfing are not 
so far removed as they at first appear.

“Both surfing and boxing are addictive but healthy,” says the Newlyn-born southpaw, who boxes out of Camborne and Redruth Amateur Boxing Club. “Surfing is like a drug, but 
a good one – you’re stoked for days after a session. It’s therapy. Boxing is different, sure, but the adrenaline it produces – the rush – is similar. I think the two sports help each other – they both require co-ordination, balance, explosive power and 
a high level of fitness.”

Smart boxes at middleweight and has amassed a near-perfect record of 16 wins in 17 bouts – many by KO. Indeed, the only fight he has lost is last year’s ABA Novice Final in Portsmouth, something which he readily admits was “devastating, especially after such a long run of wins.” Now, though, he is on a mission first to win the ABA Novice Championships, and then to box 
in the Senior ABAs. He has already caught the eye of professional promoters, and looks set to claim yet another first – a dual identity as both pro surfer and pro boxer. But if he 
had to choose between one or the other, which would it be – surfing or boxing?

Smart pauses. The question is not easy to answer, but this is 
a man who combines a grounded sense of the possibilities before him with the top sportsman’s unquenchable desire to succeed.
“I don't think it’s realistic for me, as a British surfer, to think of winning an event at Pipeline. Maybe it’ll happen one day for an up-and-coming Brit, but it’s tough surfing here – we don’t have machine-like reefs and points that fire up all the time, we 
have mostly beach breaks that shift and change. Conditions here mean that you can’t refine your surfing in the way that many overseas surfers can. But boxing? Boxing’s different. We’ve had plenty of world champions and there’s no reason why we 
won’t have some more. I’m happy to combine the boxing and surfing for now, but it’s true, I love boxing and I want to take 
it as far as I can.”

surfing is like a drug, but a good 
one – you're stoked for days after 
a session. boxing is different, sure, 
but the adrenaline it produces – the rush – is similar. i think the two sports help each other – they both require co-ordination, balance, explosive power and a high level of fitness. f

For now, surfing and boxing in Smart’s life perfectly complement each other. Both sports are, of course, intensely individualistic, and in this another facet of Smart’s character is revealed. This 
is a man who has been known to delight in training on the 
beach at Sennen Cove (“the sand saps your strength even more than the canvas of a boxing ring,” he says), and for whom self-reliance is fundamental. “With boxing, it’s all down to one person – yourself. You’ve got nothing else to blame and nowhere to hide. Surfing is similar, though external factors such as the judges’ subjective assessment of your performance, and whether the next wave is a good one, play a role. But I approach both with 
a no-half-measures attitude. If you can’t do it, don’t.”

Smart has recently been training hard, working on his core strength and explosiveness, with a view to the coming boxing season’s campaign. He says that a good diet is essential, 
too, and manages to keep in shape despite working as a sales 
rep for Surftech. “I’m on the road a lot, but it’s great,” he says. 
“I travel around Britain meeting people in the surf industry, but it’s almost as if I’m self-employed. So long as I’m making the company money, I can set my own hours but even better, the 
job means that I have to meet retailers and go surfing with them. 
So I get to network with interesting and likeable people, and 
I get to go surfing all around the UK. It’s true – a lot of people say 
I’ve got the perfect lifestyle.”

Before anyone gets too jealous, though, it’s worth reflecting that a lifestyle such as Smart’s is only achieved through a combination of abundant natural talent and plain old hard graft. Watching him train on the beach at Sennen Cove is draining enough, but it’s at Camborne and Redruth ABC where the sheer effort entailed to box at a high level is apparent. This is a boxing gym deep in mining country, in a town where the off-licence is called
 The Wineshaft and where the people are hewn of granite. The sound of leather thwacking on flesh detonates with the resonance of a 10ft wave, as the club’s boxers work unstintingly to perfect what, to its disciples, is the noblest art of them all.

Smart, as a southpaw, is an awkward opponent from the off for the club’s majority of orthodox-stance boxers, but it’s his sledgehammer left-hand shots that can inflict permanent disarray to the nervous system. None of this, though, can be taken for granted. It has to be worked at, consistently and with discipline. And there is always the possibility that the next man you face might just be stronger, quicker, and hungrier. “That’s one of the great things about boxing,” says Smart. “Only a mug talks himself up. Without hard work you’re one punch away from oblivion.”

It’s hard to see Smart facing oblivion, though. He’s too focused, too switched on and too dedicated. He looks after his surfing, his boxing and his work, and even finds time to help out the family’s Sennen Cove surf school as well. Recently, he even had a stab at river surfing, in Munich, a testament to his willingness to look beyond the world of niche and take everything a step further.

“Climbing into a wetsuit in the city felt weird enough but surfing a river just seemed bizarre,” says Smart. “The river was running very fast and the locals said it was at its most difficult to ride. Again and again, I stacked it injuring my hip as well as my ankle. But you've got to fight on and keep going, the same approach I sometimes need in a boxing match. Then slowly but surely I started to find a rhythm and another hour later I was finally doing it.”

Sam Smart finds himself eminently well looked after by life just now. But behind the laid-back surface there’s a ruthless work ethic, one which has created what might just be the perfect lifestyle.

Groms and the envious, take note – in this life, you get what
you deserve.

photogrphy: Nathan Gallagher