Shapers
Simon Anderson
Shaper :
Board :
Simon is an Australian competitive surfer, surfboard shaper and writer.
He grew up on the Northern Beaches of Sydney with three brothers.His family lived in a house that overlooked Collaroy Beach. In 1977 he won the junior division at the Bells Beach Classic competition and the Coke Surfabout in Sydney, after which he began shaping surfboards in Brookvale.
In October 1980, after seeing a twin fin surfboard with a ‘trigger point’ fin Scott had the idea for a new version of the exisiting three fin design which was later dubbed the ’Thruster’.
He created a prototype for the design and took it on tour with him to Hawaii and California. When he returned to Sydney he made two more surfboards with similar designs.
In 1981, using one of these boards Simon won the the competition at the Bells Beach Classic and the World Surf League Offshore Pipeline Masters and surfing history took its biggest turn since polyurethane foam as the ‘Thruster’ design became the most popular fin design for surfboards for the following 30 years.
Anderson retired from professional surfing in the mid-1980s and never sought to benefit commercially by patenting his invention.
In November 2000 Anderson was awarded the Australian Sports Medal for services to surfboard design. In 2011 he published his autobiography called : Thrust: The Simon Anderson Story and was inducted into the Surfer’s Hall of Fame.
