// Grant Thomas

Grant Thomas

- Life In The Fast Lane? -

With a name like Classic Malibu, you’d be forgiven for thinking we were all about old-school trim and glide. But one look at our quiver shows you that we are every bit as cutting edge and performance as our competitors.
Team CM surfer Grant Thomas epitomises this side of our label, his progressive approach the perfect visual display of just how well our performance equipment can go in critical conditions.

Though more of a power surfer, GT still has finesse, able to slot into tubes and tickle the nose with proficient style.

GT’s 2008 has been huge. Love, loss, success and hard-graft have all been part of his year the joy at the birth of his son, Fredrick, was marred by the sad loss of his mother, but the happiness created by junior has seen both Grant and his wife to a happier ’09.
GT has been with Classic Mal, as Peter White puts it, “forever”. A swathe of high-end contest results has made Grant one of the key faces in Australian longboarding, alongside a very select handful of others. A competition hiatus in the latter part of ’08 has made the Sunshine Coaster reflect on his career.
With his hands full with the now 7-month-old Fredrick and his surf school in Maroochydore, Grant is going to be taking 2009 as it comes, the odd comp here and there, mostly on home turf unless something exceptional entices him to dust off the passport.
Grant’s twelve years of pro surfing experience have given him the savvy to know a good board from a dog and, after several years of production, the GT Model is still pushing his buttons. Mixing it up occasionally, with shorter boards, quad fins, epoxys and so on, Grant still reckons the board he and Peter have refined is still the ultimate tool for the job. Quads, he says, limit his vertical game, though giving great speed and hold down the line. But Grant’s game is all about the lip, so the 2+1 set up of his signature model is the way to go.
The Noosa Festival Of Surfing will see a meek return to competition for GT, who is frothing at the opportunity to pull a singlet back on, but he’s not planning a full assault on the world stage at this stage.
And will little Freddy be following in Daddy’s sizeable footsteps? “He’ll be into surfing, for sure,” says Grant, “but he definitely won’t be pushed.”
For more information on Grant’s surf school, visit the Maroochy Surf School website.