Shaun Cansdell

Read about Shaun Cansdell and at some point the word "natural" always comes up.
He has been hyped that way by the Australian surf media going back to the late 90s, when Cansdell was barely in high school. Australia's Tracks Magazine was hyping him at 14 and Australian Surfer's Journal tagged him as one of the "10 Surfers of the New Millenium."

Some called him "the next Occy" which are very big shoes to fill indeed, but the young goofyfoot has talent to burn and so he is "The Natural." In Shakespeare's time, "natural" meant "fool" but with Cansdell it's all positive, well most of it. There is an implication that Cansdell has more talent than he knows what to do with, and like a teenaged basketball player growing into his height, Cansdell has gradually matured into more than a bit of a surprise package.

He is from the small town of Mullaway, north of Coffs Harbour on the central coast of New South Wales. There is an inside Aussie joke in the name of that town, because "mull" is Aussie slang for mixing tobacco with other substances to create a catatonic state. A lot of Australians are content to mull their lives away, but Cansdell was into the natural high and he found it just offshore of his sleepy hometown. To say it like an Aussie: "There's heaps of surf up the coast, mate." Nurtured in all that good surf, from beachbreaks to bommies, Cansdell had a good Junior career, winning the U/16 World Grommet Champ and placing second in the Billabong World Junior Champs in 2004. A few months later, Cansdell got a taste of the bigs when finished second at the Air Tahiti Nui/Von Zipper Trials which copped him one of two wildcards into the Main Event. He made it to the Second Round, where he was beaten by 1.27 points by Mick Fanning.

One of Billabong's favorite sons, through 2004 and 2005 Cansdell took a number of sponsor wildcard entries into the prime events at Mundaka and J-Bay, and he also did it the hard way, winning the Sooruz Lacanau Pro WQS event in France to enter the WCT in the 31st position.

With two events remaining in the 2006 WCT season, Cansdell was living up to the hype, sitting in 16th place, with a second place at the Globe WCT Fiji and a 5th at Bells to counter a lot of 17ths and 33rds. He is a contender for Rookie of the Year and is part of that scrum of Aussie 20 Somethings who are all swimming and scrambling and clawing over each other like lion cubs, all hungry for the meat of contest wins, points, money and glory.