Opinion
The Surf Ranch Pro is done and dusted. A wave pool in Lemoore, California, is an official tour stop. While it’s not officially official, it seems likely that a wave pool will host Olympic surfing. And oh, the outrage! So-called soul surfers the world over are up in arms, unreasonably terrified that wave pools will suck the soul out of surfing like a watery Dementor. They whip their long hair around in a vegan-powered rage, their bodies clad entirely in hemp garments held together by the spit of freerun silkworms. “Wave pools have no soul!” they shout, sustainably-harvested chia spittle flying from their lips. “Surfing is about a connection Gaia, the primal Mother Earth goddess!” But hey, you can’t stop progress, and we’re watching it steamroll the old way of competitive surfing. You know what I say? Let’s take the WSL’s surfing entirely out of the ocean and put it entirely into wave pools. You know why I say that? Because now is the time for someone to fire up a Rebel Tour. Yes! Kelly’s old idea, brought back to life after he’s just created the foundation of the anti-rebel tour. The irony would be delicious, would it not?
“What if things were different?” asked Brian Roddy on Redbull.com back in 2015. “Surfing is beautifully subjective – there is no goal, no net, basket or end zone. What’s good and what’s bad has always been a product of opinion. And so, unlike other sports, there are no real rules. And because there are no rules, the governing body has no true foundation. It’s just one, big, structured opinion. And there’s nothing glaringly wrong about how the WSL operates. It’s just that, well, what if?”
It was back in 2009 that rumors began to swirl about the so-called Rebel Tour. Kelly Slater seemed to be at the heart of it, citing problems with the then-ASP. “The inherent problem with the ASP is that it doesn’t own all its media rights,” he explained to Surfer Magazine in 2010. “It’s very fragmented. You have Billabong, Quiksilver, and Rip Curl owning all the media to all the events. So you don’t have a package—the most valuable asset to the ASP is that media. The whole purpose [of the breakaway tour] is to reset that foundation. ”
Of course, nothing ever materialized, although it seems the WSL has taken that media-related advice and run with it. According to rumors, in a recent email to athletes before the Founder’s Cup, the League wrote this:
When on the property, please do not endorse products (through product placement). This includes, for example, products placed in front of the wave, within the locker room, etc. You are of course allowed to post footage of your performances and rides at Surf Ranch and tag your sponsors while doing so.
A few years prior to that recent email, it was revealed that the WSL wasn’t going to let athletes show anything branded by sponsors not affiliated with the World Surf League. That meant, of course, that if an athlete was sponsored by, say, Red Bull, they weren’t allowed to wear their giant hat on the podium of a WSL event. And since the WSL doesn’t let their athletes surf in non-WSL related events, that proved to be a bit of a sticky point. Hell, Jordy Smith was threatened with a $50,000 fine in 2014 for wearing his Red Bull hat on the podium at the Hurley Pro.
Now that Sophie Goldschmidt is at the helm, there is no denying that she’s doing what she was hired to do: make surfing digestible to the non-surfing audience. Turpel is in the booth patiently explaining the intricate differences between a left and a right. The NFL’s Jamie Erdahl stood in front of the camera with a CBS mic. The Surf Ranch Pro was broadcast on real television instead of just a choppy website that goes down every 20 minutes. Surfing has well and truly become a sport for the masses.
So I say this, World Surf League: let’s have the current tour surfers in pool events exclusively. The judges won’t have to worry about putting a number on the vagaries of Mother Nature anymore. No longer will luck play into the equation for WSL champions. They will be crowned champions of chlorine. And, since they’re surfers, they can surf to their heart’s content in the ocean when they’re not competing in cow country. Let the cheering, fat masses line the stands, forking out their hard-earned cash for overpriced hotdogs and surfing jerseys. Let them tailgate in the parking lot, talking about their “stoke” and Felipe’s game-winning rodeo flip. We can still voraciously consume the surfers’ 10-second Instagram clips from their strike missions all over the globe. The soul of surfing will be left intact and the hemp-wearers can simply choose not to watch what the surfers do for “work.”
And then, for those Luddites who like to watch surfing competitions in the actual ocean, the Rebel Tour. Dane Reynolds. Dave Rastovich. Noa Deane. Bruce Irons. Bobby Fucking Martinez. No set tour stops. No dumb sponsor rules. Just a keen eye on the forecast, a bunch of surfers who excel in giant, perfect waves, and a judging system that doesn’t put numbers on completely subjective things like “style.” Everyone wins!
The problem here is money. Dirk Ziff vomited vast amounts of cash on the World Surf League to turn it into a functioning business. Doug Coors upturned his buckets of beer money onto NLand. Flying Rebel Tour surfers all over the planet at the drop of a hat, setting up contest sites, and dealing with local governments to obtain permits is no easy feat… but deep pockets open many a door. So where are you, mysterious billionaire? Who will be the Richard Gere to the Rebel Tour’s Julia Roberts?
