Website www.sambleakley.com Name Sam Bleakley | Role Surfer | |
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Born 1978 (age 36–37) Cornwall, United Kingdom Occupation Travel Writer, Author & Academic Books Surfing Tropical Beats, Surfing Brilliant Corners | ||
Education University of Cambridge | ||
Portrait of a Surfer
Sam Bleakley is a British surfer, travel writer and video documentary presenter. His published books include Surfing Brilliant Corners (2010), Surfing Tropical Beats (2011) and The Longboard Travel Guide (2015). He has been a multiple British and European longboard surfing champion.
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Surfing
Bleakley started surfing aged 5 in Cornwall. He rode shortboards until aged 15. He won his first European Longboard Championship title whilst studying at Cambridge (Praia Grande, Portugal, 1999). He retained the title shortly after graduating (Le Penon, France, 2001). Bleakley has won twenty-eight national, two European and four international longboard events. He has also won national and international paddle race titles.
Career
Bleakley's writing has been published in international magazines and newspapers including Conde Nast Traveller, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Independent, Men's Health, La Repubblica and numerous specialist surfing publications. He has edited longboard specials in Carve and Wavelength magazines, and been a surf columnist in The Cornishman newspaper. In his writing he compares surfing to jazz.
He has published five books on surfing and contributed to several multiauthor volumes on the topic (see Bibliography).
Bleakley has presented, produced, co-edited and written numerous surf travel films including the Brilliant Corners surf travel series on emerging surf cultures. He has appeared in action sport DVDs, documentaries and television programmes about surfing and travel including the BBC's The Perfect Wave (2001) and Grandstand (World Surfing Games 2002), Channel 4's 360 series (2001) and ITV's Surf's Up series (2002).
Bleakley is a co-founder of surfEXPLORE, a surf travel photography, writing and film project.