In a lifetime of highlights, Mike Stewart has, in his own words, a new number one: 2025 Shark Island Challenge winner.
Stewart, 25 years after claiming the 2000 SIC and solidifying himself as bodyboarding’s GOAT, turned back the clock on Friday for his second title at Australia’s premier bodyboarding wave.
A reminder: Mike Stewart is 62. Fellow competitor Anthony Miller, who went viral earlier in April after being launched into the stratosphere courtesy of a spicy Cape Solander bomb, is just 17.
Amongst the 26 competitors across the 2025 men’s and women’s divisions, it’s likely only Stewart that is unaware - or at the very least uncomfortable - with his legacy across generations of bodyboarders.
“I don't contemplate that [legacy] a lot,” Stewart told Sporting News on Monday at Cronulla’s Rydges Hotel, metres away from where he would be crowned SIC winner four days later. “I’m stoked if they’re appreciative of bodyboarding and what I do but in the heat everyone is just trying to get good waves so I don't really take that on board too much.
“At the end of the day we’re all like-minded souls out there trying to have fun, get waves and do well in the contest.”
Nine-time bodyboarding world champion. An all-time bodysurfing great. The head of Science, one of bodyboarding’s biggest brands: Stewart’s name carries weight in stand-up and boogin’ circles that few others can.
This easily could have ended differently. Parachuted into the competition five days prior to the event, with the call to greenlight a July 4 start and fellow Hawaiian Jeff Hubbard unable to make it, organisers were blessed with a rare bit of luck: Stewart was in Australia working on another project and was available.
“It’s one of my top waves in Australia so whenever I have the opportunity to surf it, I'll take advantage of that,” Stewart said.
From there, Stewart was drawn into heat three, alongside 2024 Shark Island Challenge winner Ben Sawyer, Western Australia’s Lewy Finnegan and Sydney charger Liam Lucas.
FULL RESULTS: Every heat result and breakdown from the 2025 Shark Island Challenge
It wasn’t straightforward. Having failed to progress out of his heat in 2024, Stewart advanced through heat three. He then finished third in his quarter final, needing a countback to advance, with the top-scoring third place score of the quarters earning a spot in the semi-final.
This has to be the highlight of my whole life: don’t give up on the guy that doesn’t give up.
From there, Stewart did enough to finish second, with a fairytale final appearance locked in.
“Every single person in this comp is capable of winning it,” 2007 and 2008 Shark Island Challenge winner Ben Player told Sporting News midway through the semi finals. “It’s unusual; that doesn’t usually happen in a competition. It’s just whoever gets the waves is the guy that’s going to win it.”
For an all-time great like Stewart, whose shadow hangs over every contest he enters, you’d assume that’s an advantage: how can anyone be settled when a man with the ocean seemingly at his beck and call is also paddling out in a coloured jersey?
Not so.
“When I enter competitions it’s so rare that I ever feel like ‘I've got this,’” Stewart said. ‘With 2000 [when he won] until the very last wave, the very last manoeuvre, I didn't know if it was enough. Usually I'm pretty hard on myself so a lot of times I'll find myself doing better than I think I'm doing.”
Stewart led the pace in the final, nabbing two set waves before anyone else had bothered the scorers, claiming a third to seemingly lock in the title before Lewy Finnegan surged with a big score, Dave Winchester doubled up barrels, emerging from deep within a pit to send the Cronulla point wild in the fading light and then Finnegan, the form rider all day, lifted again.
With the presentation 90 minutes later, uncertainty hung in the air. Had Stewart done enough? Was Lewy Finnegan - a standout in every heat he’d been in all day - going to be denied?
Watch the reaction to the announcement below for yourself.
You’ve likely seen it on the countless Instagram shares since: an elated Stewart producing a locker room-esque line that’s fit for the big stage: “This has to be the highlight of my whole life: don’t give up on the guy that doesn’t give up.”
For a man renowned for his humble, stoic demeanour, the mask slipped just for a second, revealing the raw passion the all-time great still has for the sport and competing.
'It's a testament to not giving up'
Approximately 45 minutes later when the dust had - somewhat - settled from the announcement, Stewart was, as always, good enough to give us time.
“Remember where we were this week," he mused, to me but also straight through me, motioning to the chairs metres away where another Shark Island Challenge title had been a delicious pipe dream just a few days ago.
“Crazy.
"It's like a fantasy that's in a distant world; I still can't even process exactly everything. It's just so crazy how it's come about, you know, so stoked.
“In terms of my goals in my life this has to be the top one because I've always wanted to compete well and see how far I could go at a high level as I age.
“Now that I'm in my 60s and I just won a contest that's one of the most prestigious in the world, if not the most prestigious, it's surreal. It's a testament to not giving up and just keep going, you know?”
For organisers redlining their collective blood pressure through shifting conditions, council permits, rider availability and the general whatifsomethinggoeswrong that’ll shake you awake at 2am, a perfect final of four deserving riders had no bad ending.
“All this hard work, blood, sweat and tears has paid off: we feel everyone has won today,” Mark Sadler, contest director alongside Luke O’Connor and Sam Venn, told Sporting News.
“It’s pretty crazy to have one of the greatest athletes across any sport come to your event and win in your hometown against the best in the world.”
In the hectic aftermath of the final and before the presentation, there was a discovery: on the floor of an apartment overlooking Shark Island, which was serving as the broadcast HQ, was a yellow competitor’s jersey - Mike Stewart’s.
Contest director Sadler scooped it up before I could lay my paws on it. “Jesus, that’s got to be Mike’s…we’ve got to save it,” he said, no doubt with more altruistic intentions than what I had planned, with my argument for a historic bright yellow jersey in my family’s predominantly monochrome apartment already in the final stage of sign-off inside my head.
Wherever that jersey ended up it’s a testament to uncharted territory.
It’s what keeps Stewart going. “That's one of the most incredible things about this sport: there doesn’t seem like there’s any boundary to the ocean: there’s always something even more crazy around the corner,” Stewart said when we first met in response to a somewhat fumbling query on…well, why keep going?
There will be others who win the Shark Island Challenge. Several lucky few who can lay claim to be a Waterman. There will never be another who can lay claim to being a pioneer, a standard bearer, an innovator and, at the age of 62, a two-time champion of the Shark Island Challenge.
Don’t give up on the guy who doesn’t give up.
Mike Stewart seems like he’s got plenty left to give.