The official report is in. After a twice-delayed autopsy report, it is official: one of our greats, Andy Irons, succumbed to death, in part, because of an "acute mixed drug ingestion".
He was a three-time world champion and also the first ASP world champion to seek the perfect ride heaven-side, so to speak. Since, 2 November, as the Inertia reported, when Andy was found in his hotel room at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Dallas, Texas, the surfing world has been holding its breath awaiting the results. We all were wondering if Andy's demons had got the best of him. It seems, at least in part, they had.
The official report lists two causes of death, by two separate doctors. One, the mixed drug ingestion; and the other, sudden death from cardiac arrest due to severe blockage of a main artery of the heart. The controversy over whether or not to make an issue of this has been doing the rounds in the surf media. Some have contested that we (surfers) ought to keep Andy's failures behind closed doors , while others have been commenting about how the surf industry may have failed to address the reality of Andy's drug issues successfully. Certainly, no one was talking about these issues publicly prior to Andy's death.
I met Andy in 1994 at the World Amateur Championships in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, before it became known as the ISA World Games. I travelled a bit with him, but didn't really get to know him. He was an amazing surfer, and I admired him for his ability and his charismatic smile. I have friends who knew him better than I, and they have always spoken well of him.
Surfing is a funny world. There is what floats on the surface and what lurks beneath. Often, what you know of someone on the surface does not match what you know of them below. That is to say, how someone acts in the water can be much different from how they are projected in ads.
Andy was never this type of surfer. He was never this type of man. He was real. He was a fallible human being foiled often in the course of his career with the plastic-superman image of 10-time world champion Kelly Slater.
While no one in the surfing industry seems ready to dig in and talk about the use of illicit drugs and partying on the world tour (something I saw firsthand when I was younger), or to discuss whether surfer's employers (that is, their sponsors) have a duty of care towards those they invest millions in, for a return on that investment of millions more, everyone is taking a moment to honour the passing of a human being everyone admired. We may disagree about whether to try to take something useful from his death (to teach our youth) or whether it is better to gloss over the dark side of Andy Irons' genius, but we do all agree that we have great respect for his life and what he accomplished in his brief 32 years.
We will miss you, Andy. Thank you for your humanity.
