Sports are entertainment, right? WSL beaches should look like this. Well, maybe once a year.
Isn’t the Fiji Pro just lovely? Doesn’t it warm your heart to think of these gifted men and women of privilege, swanning around on private island resorts in the South Pacific, going from bar to boat to barrel then back to bar again? It must be tough on Tour. They do deserve a little luxury. Would you believe that sometimes they need to carry bags through airports and even wait on airplanes?! The poor souls. To think they are forced to surf in 11 contests every year, with only each other for company in the water, and with only a 3 month break! I don’t know how they manage.
I shouldn’t be so bitter, it is starting to warm up a bit here in Scotland. The other week I nearly paddled out without gloves. Then it snowed again and I put my gloves on. I am not fond of wearing a hood. I am even less keen on wearing two hoods because my wetsuit has holes and I need to wear an insulated vest with a hood attached. You can forget about peripheral vision, it’s a bit like wearing a neck brace. The number of days I surfed in something other than a hooded 5/4 fullsuit last year was precisely one. One single, solitary day where I slipped into my 3/2 and skimmed the water like a seabird instead of wallowing like the death throes of the Trestles whale.
But this is my surfing life, and I wouldn’t change it. It has its charms, sure, but it’s bloody hard graft. I often wonder how many talented surfers round the world would have reached a high standard if they were raised in a cold climate.
Cold water is a daily reality for a large cross section of the surfing community, so why isn’t it represented at the top level of professional surfing?
What the WCT needs, what it has needed for a long time, is a proper cold water destination. And I don’t mean ooooh-it’s-a-bit-nippy, July in in South Africa, best-look-out-my-4/3 sort of cold. I mean proper freezing. The thickest hooded wetsuit you can find, boots, gloves, shriveled manhood, hypothermia sort of cold. Call me a sadist, but I want to see the pros dragged from their comfort zone. I want to see them chewed up and spat out by heavy cold water waves. I don’t want smiley happy cute little Keanu Asing positively glowing in boardies; I want stony-faced, bedraggled misery, I want to see athletes during competitions looking like the love children of Charlie Medina and Matt Wilkinson’s hair!
Heaven knows, we need the entertainment factor at least. It’s fair to say the Tour has been a let down so far. Snapper was screamingly average. Bell’s was like Occy in his prime – fat and unruly, Brazil was simply laughable, and so far the Fiji Pro looks dreamy – for middle-class bankers on their annual boat trip.
Don’t we want to challenge the best surfers in the world? Don’t we want to watch them suffer? Aren’t the most entertaining events the ones where the pros are pushed to their limits? Challenging conditions make the best viewing, and there are few things more challenging than a backside bottom turn when you can’t turn your damn head, let alone feel your face.
Adding a cold water destination – Canada, Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Alaska, Iceland – has the potential to be a logistical nightmare, but that’s not our problem, and effectively we’re the ones calling the shots. It’s all about entertainment, viewing figures, and revenue at the end of the day. If the Red Bull Cape Fear event and last year’s Pe’ahi Challenge have proven anything, it’s that we all love a bit of carnage and genuine what-the-fuck entertainment. And four foot Restaurants with a mild hangover is certainly not that. The ‘CT calendar needs tweaked, the WSL need to make money, and we want to be entertained. Adding a prime cold water destination to the Tour would tick all of these boxes.
