‘Simply mind-blowing’: blind surfer Matt Formston’s wave of glory

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‘Simply mind-blowing’: blind surfer Matt Formston’s wave of glory

This champion sportsman, once angry with the world and himself, is chasing one of surfing’s toughest moves: to ride inside – and exit from – a brutish barrel.

By Heath Gilmore

Matt Formston with surf coach Michael Crisp. “It’s all about trust.”

Matt Formston with surf coach Michael Crisp. “It’s all about trust.”Credit: Danielle Smith 

Matt Formston paces the car park at Lennox Point in far northern NSW like a sugared-up kid waiting to pounce on the end-of-party lolly bags. Many goals have been set during the COVID-19 pandemic, some quickly broken, others set in stone. Formston has been dreaming of surfing enormous barrelling waves. He wants to stand inside a 10- to 15-foot screamer – for some arcane reason, surfers firmly adhere to imperial measurements – with a curtain of water curling over the top of him, the ocean spitting and snarling at the temerity of his intrusion.

Even in the madness of youth, when broken limbs are laughed off more readily than in middle age, there are no guarantees when a human flings themselves down the front of a big wave. In Formston’s case all bets are off: he’s nearly 95 per cent blind.

Formston, 43, has been surfing since he was 11, but has never been consistently barrelled in a giant wave. He’s a member of an elite, global group of blind and visually impaired athletes who compete against each other six times a year, culminating in an annual International Surfing Association world championship. Or they did, until the COVID outbreak brought everything to a halt.

Now, with time to spare, the three-time and reigning world champion is dedicating himself to a new goal. The barrel – when the lip of a wave folds over and fully covers the surfer, leaving them standing or crouching on their board inside a tube of water – is one of the most sought-after surfing experiences. Blind and vision-impaired athletes have been barrelled by accident in smaller waves. Not one, however, has pulled into a barrel of a brutish size and exited it standing. It’s fiendishly difficult even for full-sighted surfers.

The idea of taking on the big barrel took hold during a holiday at Lennox Head last September. Formston was taken out to ride some waves by Michael Crisp, a gentle and watchful acquaintance and long-time coach at the Surfing Australia High Performance Centre at Casuarina, south of Kingscliff in north-eastern NSW. It’s the home of Surfing Australia, and the only facility where surfers of all skill levels can access top coaching. Crisp grew up around Cronulla in Sydney’s south, surfing heavy reef breaks and slabs before taking on Hawaii’s Pipeline and other world-renowned spots. A Christian chaplain now living in Lennox Head, he jokes that he’s seen God and the Devil in the same snarling lip. After their first surf session, over a few beers, Crisp spoke with Formston about the experience of being barrelled in heavier waves. He also extolled the joys of Lennox Head as a place to live.

The conversation crystallised into something more concrete for Formston, who was by then seeking a change, a smaller place easier to navigate for a vision-impaired man with a young family. He knew that his job as sustainability and sponsorship executive for Optus Enterprise was highly portable. His wife Rebecca, a Brit who works as an early childhood educator, was also up for the move. One month later, the Formston family – Matt, Rebecca and their three kids Max, 7, Elsie, 5, and Jake, 2 – bought a house at Lennox Head.

Formston is a triple world surfing champion.

Formston is a triple world surfing champion.Credit: Danielle Smith

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Many COVID-inspired projects are astonishing – some, at the same time, are a little silly. Others, like a blind surfer going after waves of consequence, are a lot crazier, prompting the question: Matt, are you friggin’ mad?

“I’d be mad if I wasted my life sitting on the couch at home,” Formston says in response. We’re standing in the car park at Lennox Head on an early autumnal day of white sunshine. A shaved head caps a mischievous face, which sits on the body of a cage-fighter. He’s a weapon. “What are the people who think that way [about me surfing] doing with their lives? You’ve only got so many days in this life. My greatest fear is not using all of them to do what I want.

“I’m really curious about pushing myself and exploring difficult goals. I feel the overwhelming need as I get older to set benchmarks for people with a disability, so they can be inspired and try to beat me. And for those who don’t have a disability, they should just pull their finger out.”

“I feel the overwhelming need as I get older to set benchmarks for people with a disability, so they can be inspired … And for those who don’t have a disability, they should just pull their finger out.”

On this sulky, humid Sunday morning, Formston is preparing to surf Lennox Point – the most difficult break around Lennox Head and one of the most famed nationwide – for the second time in his life. The waves are small today, two to three feet, which is perfect. Since his move, he’s been slowly mastering the skills needed to surf here, which requires jumping off and returning to shore across treacherous rocky headlands and perfecting a jet ski tow-in onto a fast-moving wave. Most importantly, he’s been cementing the bond he has with Crisp, who surfs alongside him or guides him from the jet ski.

Beads of sweat form on Formston’s head as he prepares to leave the car park, reaching out for the tail of a board held by Crisp. They walk towards a tunnel of vegetation; before any answers can be sought or given, the initial gloom envelops them. There is nothing left to do but follow.

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“Seven stairs,” Crisp shouts.
Formston nods, holding onto his coach’s board, feeling the descent.
“… Five stairs …
“… Cycle path …
“… Seven stairs again …
“… Three stairs …”

The ocean crunch echoes through the tunnel. Everyone picks up the pace, all of us in a line, bouncing elbows going up and down like pistons now, for the water is closer. We enter a pandanus-tree-lined clearing. A submerged volcanic-rock platform spears out from the headland into the path of the oncoming swell. The resulting collision can throw a wall of water skywards. Waiting surfers drive down the crashing wave and turn right, on a good day sometimes for hundreds of metres, ending up inside the gaping mouth of a basalt rock beach, littered with thousands of pointed, sharp boulders like leftover dinosaur teeth.

As Formston strides towards the edge of the boulders, a momentary silhouette in the morning sun, two large silver words on his back come into focus: BLIND SURFER.


When Matt Formston was five, he was diagnosed with macular dystrophy. Affecting the back of the eye, or retina, the condition leads to cell damage in an area called the macula, which controls what can be seen directly in front. Usually associated with older people, seldom with juveniles, in simple terms macular dystrophy leaves sufferers with a large black hole in the middle of their vision, with blurred vision on the periphery.

A visiting nurse to Formston’s kindergarten made the discovery. She subsequently told his shocked parents Don and Loraine Formston that their son was as “blind as a doorknob”. The outdoors-loving Formston, who ran out of their home in North Narrabeen on Sydney’s northern beaches to climb trees and catch balls in their Wimbledon Avenue community, had been unknowingly, gradually compensating for his diminishing eyesight.

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At that stage he could still largely see; he would lose about 95 per cent of his vision within a year. Formston says he has few, if any, memories of being fully sighted. For as long as he can remember, his life has been blurred shapes, outlines and calculated guesswork.

The macular dystrophy diagnosis rocked the family. Matt grew up with his sister Jacqui and half-brother Stuart, one of Don’s three children from his first marriage (both he and Loraine had been married before). The hard-working family lived for weekend sport: Don was a beer and wine sales and marketing manager, while Loraine ran a hairdressing salon from home.

The diagnosis of their son’s blindness stirred in them a determination that Matt would be fully engaged with the world: mainstream schooling, sport and risk-taking must all be part of his life. It was an unusual decision for the early 1980s, when institutionalisation was the norm. Don and Loraine visited experts and schools for vision-impaired students and left with the fear that these kids would be consigned to an indoor life, shut away from the rest of the world.

“We were virtually told, ‘That’s the end for him,’ ” Loraine remembers. “Look, our family isn’t way out or totally different, but we just thought it was best for Matthew as a person. He wasn’t an academic kid, he was an outdoor kid. We wanted to travel with Matthew on our own journey. You could say he was an experiment.”

The Formstons insisted on forging a fully engaged son, while also readying him for a difficult life. Don banned the word “can’t”.

“We told Matt that some things are harder than others, but there’s no such thing as barriers, there are only obstacles,” says Don, who now lives with Loraine in Tamworth, NSW. “With an obstacle, you either go around it, or over, or through it, but you’ve got to beat it. You’ve got to. You’ve got to beat it. And, I think that was our mantra pretty much all along.”

The outdoors was the proving ground for the young blind boy. A little nugget tackling gobsmacked opponents in junior rugby league games. Riding a skateboard down Waterloo Street as a chorus of mates yelled encouragement. The Narrabeen lagoon was his backyard and it became a personal outdoor gym, serving as a mini triathlon course to swim, cycle and run around.

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The beach loomed largest of all in Formston’s life, a 500-metre walk from his front door. He remembers screaming with delight atop his first boogie board; his father pushing him onto his first wave on a surfboard at nearby Warriewood Beach; neighbourhood mates watching out for him at the highly competitive northern beaches surf breaks. His life of family and friends was full of love and security.

His teenage years proved more problematic. Formston was fitter and more athletic than most of his peers, yet was left behind in team sports because of his vision impairment. It was at St Augustine’s College, an all-boys high school at Brookvale, where the problems began. “Bullying was part of growing up as a boy on the northern beaches; if you had a disability you copped a little bit more,” he says. “It built to a crisis when these blokes were waving their fingers in front of me, asking me how many fingers they were holding up, and I was just was so sick of it. I grabbed one of their hands and broke some fingers.”

The incident prompted a meeting between his parents and the school at which the extent of the bullying was revealed to his shocked parents and teachers. In the wake of all that, Don and Loraine decided that their non-academic son needed a new start at a school with courses better suited to his interests. They settled on The Forest High School, a co-educational school at nearby Frenchs Forest.

Here, Formston became the class joker. He also started taking drugs, so prevalent at the time, all the while trying to fit in – and win the attention of girls. “I remember one girl told me that she couldn’t go out with me because if we kissed, I’d be unable to look her in the eye,” he says.

Surfing was his solace. The water took no sides. It was always accepting of him. Somehow, he got over the line and got his HSC.

Assisted by Michael Crisp, Formston becomes half-man, half-crab to navigate the boulders edging the challenging Lennox Point surf break.

Assisted by Michael Crisp, Formston becomes half-man, half-crab to navigate the boulders edging the challenging Lennox Point surf break.Credit: Danielle Smith


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It’s the middle of autumn, two months after our first meeting. Surfers are tiptoeing across the elliptical stones at Lennox Point before leaping over oncoming waves to paddle out. Formston and Crisp emerge from the tunnel of vegetation and wait. They must cross a 30-metre-wide stretch of boulders sloping down to the water. “It’s a field of stone that grows cactus, brown snakes – and surfers,” Crisp says. “Be careful, everyone.”

Formston trudges forwards. The task ahead seems impossible, but suddenly a rather fantastical transformation takes place. The surfer becomes a half-man, half-crab, as he squats down on the first large boulder, leans backwards and reaches behind with his left hand, using his right arm to hold his surfboard aloft, out of harm’s way. A tentative foot is sent forwards, searching for a rough foothold on the next boulder, and the other foot follows slowly after. The back hovers over the rocks, as the extended legs contract to move the whole body forward, with the left arm propping up the entire action.

“Cactus, one metre to your left,” Crisp shouts. Under the pearly white sunshine, Formston’s limbs and muscles twitch from the strain across the dry, hot rocks. “Large boulder on your right.”

After nearly 10 minutes, the first gentle surge of water wraps around Formston’s searching feet. From this welcome signal, all limbs retract to a single boulder, for a full-body roll-up, vertebra by vertebra, until Formston is standing, facing the ocean.

“That was awesome. I’ve lost so much bark on these rocks over the years,” Crisp says. “There can be a lot of blood.”

Formston navigating the boulders at Lennox Point surf break.

Formston navigating the boulders at Lennox Point surf break.Credit: Danielle Smith


In the early 2000s and in his early 20s, Formston was living on his own in a one-bedroom unit on the northern beaches. He was at breaking point.

Floating from one odd job to another, smoking lots of dope and getting into pub fights, he didn’t give a shit. The wider world was in lockstep agreement with that, while his parents, crying “tears of blood” as his mum puts it, were finding it increasingly hard to reach him emotionally.

Sitting in the front bar of the Novotel Sydney Manly Pacific, Formston tells Good Weekend how pub fights and smoking dope and taking party drugs had become his way of rebalancing a world that ignored him. The guarantees nurtured by his family in childhood had faltered under the weight of bone-crushing anonymity that adulthood had ushered in, leaving him hardly able to breathe. One Christmas morning, he woke up at a Mona Vale bus stop, covered in somebody else’s blood. Another Newport Arms night out, another fight, his fists bruised and busted. “Really, I should have died,” he says of that time, rubbing his eyes. “I remember thinking that morning, ‘Is this my life?’ ”

Philip Shanely, a friend since they were both five, recalls the fights with bouncers and strangers. His friend was always seeking some sort of atonement for slights, real or imagined, over his blindness. “There was anger within Matt and a depression,” Shanely says. “It was like he had this chip on his shoulder, he wanted to get in their face, to take on the establishment. But mate, I have to tell you, there’s one big thing about this bloke – he’s got starch.”

Things began to change around 2002, when Formston applied for a position as a salesman with Optus. The telecommunications company gave him a full-time job. In the process he regained ownership of his life, and over the next 18 years moved gradually into more senior positions, ending up as sustainability and sponsorship executive for Optus Enterprise. “That job became so important to me. The necessity to keep that job drove me to pull myself out of the hole,” he says.

Formston with wife Rebecca and their children.

Formston with wife Rebecca and their children.Credit: Danielle Smith

Formston began engaging with sport again. In 2009, a charity ride to raise money for macular dystrophy led to him being talent-spotted. A bike shop he visited tipped off an Olympic coach that “a blind bloke had walked off the street and his leg-strength results are through the roof”. He began a sporting career as a cyclist, which led to his winning the UCI Para-cycling Road World Cup in 2013, taking out a world championship and a world record for vision-impaired cyclists in 2014 and representing Australia at the Rio Paralympics in 2016.

By this time Formston was married to Rebecca Thomas, an English backpacker and childcare worker he’d got together with in 2010. A no-nonsense brunette with a ready laugh, she loved his sense of humour and self-belief. “He knew what he wanted in life, which I really liked,” she says. “He was then more accepting of his blindness, but it didn’t slow him down. I could see that life with him would be challenging but lots of fun.”

After the 2016 Rio Games, Formston was finished with the demands of cycling. “I loved being a paralympian and representing Australia, but I had done everything I could,” he says. “I never lived for cycling like I did for surfing, and I thought that’s where I really wanted to make my mark.”

Formston gets ready  to pop up on a wave off Boulder Beach, launched by Michael Crisp from the jet ski.

Formston gets ready to pop up on a wave off Boulder Beach, launched by Michael Crisp from the jet ski. Credit: Danielle Smith


Formston and Crisp sit astride a jet ski in late June, scudding across the top of lurching sea mountains, far from shore. With an inflatable sled attached to the back of their machine, they’re heading north from the mouth of the Richmond River at Ballina towards Boulder Beach, south of Lennox Head Beach.

They’re alone when the jet ski reaches Boulder Beach. No one is surfing the five beaches between Ballina and Lennox Head today, where large slabs of water rear from an ugly, lumpen ocean, scattering useless froth everywhere in its wake. The swell is approaching from a south/south-easterly direction, the waves ranging somewhere between eight and 10 feet, and 12-feet-plus on the bigger sets. It looks unmanageable, certainly without a jet ski to reach the position where the waves are breaking.

Crisp, who is driving the ski, quickly assesses the break. The pair talk about how they’ll approach it. Removing an external life vest, but leaving an impact safety vest in place, Formston switches to sitting side-saddle, with his legs dangling over the jet ski’s right-hand side.

An elated Formston and Crisp after taking on a huge June swell.

An elated Formston and Crisp after taking on a huge June swell.Credit: Danielle Smith

During the past three months, Formston and Crisp have crafted a shorthand form of communication to cut through the noise of the waves and wind. In, out, north, south, paddle, hold (wait) and now: the essential words deployed to steer a blind surfer around the ocean.

The surfers talk rips, how many paddles or seconds between waves. They talk about patterns such as the number of waves per set and try to identify whether it’s the first, second or fifth wave of a set that’s best. They talk about having a plan A, B and C if something unusual happens or goes awry. They talk about how a wave is performing, for example, if it’s breaking for 50 metres and will allow two or three turns before you have to kick out.

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Formston feels the movement of the sea, the warmth of the sun and steadfast wind direction, helping him pinpoint his position. He sweeps his eyes from side to side, scanning for blurred objects in his periphery – he might not be able to identify them, but he knows when he needs to avoid them. Spotting a wave, the fourth and biggest of a seven-wave set, Crisp guns the jet ski into position, with its inflatable sled attached, travelling between 35 and 45 kilometres per hour. “Hold …  hold … hold,” Crisp shouts, as the jet ski begins to lift in front of the crest of the wave. “Go Matty, now, now.”

With his surfboard attached by a leg rope, Formston half-steps and half-leaps chest-first onto the board, which is about two-thirds of the way up the face of the wave. Through his stomach, he feels the vibrations of the water. The board is planing at the right speed, prompting him to pop up onto his feet. Formston is alone now. The speed of the board is faster than the chasing giant, nearly four to five times higher than him. While dropping, he keeps his board flat, like a snowboarder, and does little jumps over three bumps in a row. Finally, near the bottom, he can dig the rail of his board into the wave, allowing a bottom, right-hand turn. He’s in connection with the wave, he’s feeling the speed, his hands out front, feet closer together in a better crouch, and travelling back up the wave, his feet feeling the ascent.

“That’s awesome. That’s awesome,” Crisp roars from the jet ski.

Formston divides the opening wave into three parts: top, middle and bottom. He settles into the middle section to build up speed again, and he screams across the wave. Suddenly, the pursuit slows, suggesting an imminent collapse. Taking evasive action, he drives down the face of the wave, trying to generate enough speed to move to the next section. It’s too late. The water avalanches around him, sucking him downwards, and rag-dolling his body along the ocean bottom for nearly 15 seconds.

Punching the surface, Formston gasps for air, only for the next wave to roll over him, engulfing him again. He resurfaces seconds later and drags the surfboard back into his grasp, and starts paddling towards the next looming wave, digging underneath the belligerent ball of water, what surfers call duck-diving. He then duck-dives the final wave of the set, before turning his board around to face the beach and escape the impact zone.

“It’s all about trust. I trust Michael with my life. And he trusts my abilities and trusts that I’ve done the training and have the ability to take on these conditions.”

Crisp watches the monster set swallow his friend. After the last wave, he charges back into the white water at more than 60 kilometres per hour, urging Formston to link arms and fling himself and his board onto the back of the inflatable sled. They wait for a gap between the sets then roar off out to the back again.

Formston is spent. Crisp powers the jet ski out of the action, allowing the surfer to recover and replenish his oxygen levels. They allow a number of sets to rumble past before Crisp spots a wave that is likely to barrel. They roar into position. A re-energised Formston unloads again from the jet ski. He pulls into the barrel. He’s inside the barrel. He’s inside. He’s … the wave collapses before he can exit. Close, but not today.

There are five more waves in the hour-long session, including a smaller one with three big turns, which brings an appreciative whoop from onlookers on the nearby headland. At the end of the session, the men are ecstatic; this is one of the biggest surf sessions Formston has ever done. He might not have nailed a giant barrelling wave yet, but he’s getting closer. Texts are sent to friends, with an array of emojis – enough to shame a teenager.

“It’s all about trust,” Formston says. “I trust Michael with my life. And he trusts my abilities and trusts that I’ve done the training and have the ability to take on these conditions. It was awesome.”

Formston heads down the front of a wave more than twice his size.

Formston heads down the front of a wave more than twice his size.Credit: Danielle Smith


Australian writer Craig McGregor once wrote, perhaps with a nod to counter-cultural readers, that surfers are trying to stretch experience to the utmost limit, to expand the borders of life until they experience everything but the ultimate – death.

“With Matt, all his available senses are heightened,” Crisp says. “He feels the water through his fingers, his body. His ears can hear the ocean, where it’s been and where it’s going. He’s got the feeling through his board when he rides the wave. And that trust, just leaning into it, like he just leans into things and, whereas we can see it coming, he’s just got to go with his instinct, that something is there. It’s amazing to watch.”

“His vision loss is significant. To be able to surf is simply mind-blowing. I’m in awe.”

Cem Oztan, a Vision Australia orthoptist and paralympic classifier, classed Formston as a B2 athlete, which means he can detect the movement of hands at two metres. “The scarring on his macula is extensive, his vision loss is significant,” he says. “To be able to surf is simply mind-blowing. I’m in awe.”

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Rebecca is philosophical about her husband’s pursuit of big waves. “If I didn’t let him go surfing, then he’d be miserable and we’d be miserable,” she says. “But, if something doesn’t sound reasonable, I’ll always let him know. He breaks everything down very methodically; but if I’m concerned, he listens.”

For his part, Formston says surfing is about the joy of being alive. “When I’m surfing there are no potholes, no poles, no bollards to smack me in the balls. I can be reckless, I can go and do a big turn, I can pull into the barrel, I can do all those things, and I laugh if I get smashed by the wave. And it’s like, it’s not funny, but it’s, it’s … freedom.”

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