Borland’s relationship with Rage is long-running but only formalised recently. He first met Toby Cregan and Creed McTaggart around age 14 at the RVCA house in Hawaii, when RVCA had a strong North Shore presence. Since then he has been flowing gear and staying in touch, but lived on the other side of the Pacific. This year that changed. He finally linked up with the Rage crew on their side of the world and filmed a full part with them between Indo and Oz. Shane said it one of the clear highlights of his year, both for the surfing and for the chance to slot into a brand run entirely by surfers, with “no corporate higher-ups” making decisions.

Shane Borland Drops His Rage Part, Seals Himself As Ultimate Surf x Skate Crossbreed

“That pink board is Kobo’s, and I had some mojo with it.”

cinema // Dec 9, 2025

Words by Ethan Davis

Reading Time: 4 minutes

“I don’t even know if I’d say I’m a big karaoke fan,” laughs Shane Borland. “But I’ve been out so much that you end up in karaoke bars and you draw a blank on what song to do. So I keep a list in my phone.” The list is still growing. Anytime a track comes on that might translate under dim lights and beer pressure, it goes straight into Notes. “Once I get started, it’s hard to get off the mic,” he admits.

Karaoke works as a metaphor here, because 2025 for Shane Borland has sort of been a season of improvised stages. “I kind of didn’t have much of a plan,” he says. “I knew I’d start with Japan for Stab High, then go straight to Indo for the Vacation trip. That’s all I really had planned. Then everything else just kept lining up.”

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Tack on another Stab High in Sydney, where he piloted the air section pre-event, then made the semis. A Keris Cup – the hybrid surf x skate contest at Uluwatu Surf Villas, which ran during a maxing Bukit swell – and saw him crowned the ultimate crossbreed by Nathan and Christian Fletcher, Christian Hosoi, Marlon Gerber, and Omar Hassan. The Rage and Rusty deals came in parallel.

Not a bad wrap sheet for a six month travel stint – his longest outside the US so far.

A lot of those highlights are wrapped into “Shane Day”, a term originally coined by Wil Reid, after he greased the opening and closing enormous backside rotation on his last wave of the session, came in, and threw a mini party in the shade of the Sumatran jungle. “For the record, Shane Day is not my birthday,” he chuckles. “It was just a good day.”

The 2025 Keris Cup final boss. Photo by Hamish Humphreys.

Borland is 26. He grew up in Topanga Canyon, going to school and learning to surf in nearby Malibu. His first waves were at First Point, pushed in by his dad and older brother.

Both of his parents are from Venice. His dad grew up around the Dogtown era, surfing and skating with people from that scene. His brother, six years older, was a talented young longboarder, sponsored and doing contests. Most of Shane’s early weekends were spent at his brother’s events, hanging around Malibu and up and down the California coast.

Surfing wasn’t actually the first thing that stuck. As a kid, he was “more into skating” and used to roll around carparks while the rest of the family surfed. When the Venice Skatepark opened, he was eight years old and there almost every day.

He was sponsored as a skateboarder before he was known for surfing. Termite Skateboards – a kids’ brand whose whole team was roughly “10 and under” – picked him up when he was six. By his own account he was skating more than he surfed until around age 10–12, when contests, friends and better boards pulled him into surfing more seriously. From that point on, he tried to keep both going in parallel.

– There’s a bit of Byron Bay skate footy in here, but plenty more from the streets in Andrew Jacobson’s Chpt 11 film, ‘Crossed Roads’. It’s pretty heavy how exceptional he is at both.

Unsurprisingly, Borland describes his body as “pretty smoked” for a 26 yo. His worst injury so far is a broken ankle from skating. He’s also had knee issues that he puts down to a combination of both sports. In his view, skating produces more acute damage – “one slam in a skatepark” will leave you sore for days, while surfing is usually “pretty chill” unless there’s a reef, a bad tweak or, as there was at Uluwatu this year during the Keris, 10-foot cleanup sets to test your lung capacity.

It feels worth mentioning, California has lineage when it comes to producing incredible freesurfers. Curren, Reynolds, Martinez, Burch… the list goes on. Nevertheless, 2025 has felt like a breakthrough year for several of the younger crew: from Borland to Tosh Tudor and Kobe Hughes, all feel worthy of a mention in the Surfer of the Year conversation. Shane’s analysis of that below.

“There’s so many amazing surfers in California. I suppose a lot of them just pigeonholed doing contests, which is why it’s been cool seeing their success freesurfing. I feel like Tosh chased crazier waves than anyone and always seems to always score. Then Kobe’s just amazing to surf with because of how differently he connects a wave together and how he never forces anything. In most of this clip, I’m riding one of Kobo’s boards, a pink Patrick Star, which he left in Indo and I feel like I had a little bit of mojo with it.”

In a roundabout way, that’s exactly what’s keeping him hyped on surfing. “Just travelling with friends, becoming a more well-rounded surfer, feeling like you’re a part of something that’s not corporate or dictated by higher-ups, like Rage and Lazer Fins. Approaching everything with hopeful optimism but no real expectations. And just being around good crew keeps you inspired. So hopefully we just keep it rolling. California’s a great base to travel from, and there’s sort of the perfect ratio of shit days:good days to surf enough but still have the desire to find waves.”