A friend that is nestled deep within the many secretive layers of the surf industry told me earlier this year to watch out for 'major things' about to happen. Sounds a bit like a fortune tellers ramblings or maybe a horoscopes idle jabbering into what could be anything. Turns out he was right, a shark attack on live TV, artificial waves in the US, Olympic surfing and Kelly not in the top 5...
Lets leave out the shark thing as it has been done to death recently and everyone has seen the footage a thousand times... oh okay just one more time then.
Right now that's out of the way, I want to take some time and pass on the new idea/phenomenon that is inland surfing on artificial waves. Not only do we have one artificial wave opening within the UK this August called Surf Snowdonia but a deal has just been announced to host a similar (probably bigger) project in Austin, Texas. There have also been rumblings of some big cities across Europe and Japan taking a good sniff at the Wavegarden project that's providing the technology for the two aforementioned locations.
I can hear you saying 'Yeah, yeah big deal!' but lets think for a second about the ramifications of this. We are going to have our sport suddenly exposed to a whole lot of people who would never normally be able to participate. Until now surfing has been for those privileged who either live near the coast or those that give up something to move there. Surfing is not there all the time, you have to wait for the right conditions, endless visits to your surf forecasters bookmarked page, getting up early only to be disappointed. The bottom line is at the moment, you have to put the effort in to get the reward and, in a way, that's what makes the sport even more special to me. It is also why such a huge part of the worlds population do not surf. With the Wavegarden technology, this is about to change.
This is not some self indulgent rant about how surfing should be kept pure but more about how we will see our sport become a lot more mainstream in the coming years. With the extra exposure and the chance for 9-5 workers to 'book their slot' at a Wavegarden facility on a Saturday we will see a huge increase in the amount of people infected by the best sport in the world. From an Industry point of view alone: the amount of boards sold; wetsuits; leashes; clothing. Perhaps there will be specialist boards made and shaped just for artificial waves, the possibilities for growth are endless.
Should surfing be in the Olympics? Well to be honest that is a can of worms that I am just not willing to open. Lets just say that if it is, it is - the fact is the the ISA have approached the Olympic committee again for 2020 and have been turned down but only because they say that the technology for artificial waves is not proven enough. Well boys with this news of the new Texas Wavegarden, that is all about to change. Until then we have the the WSL, which lets face it, with live shark attacks is much more interesting anyway.
Endless Perfection.
The Olympice proposal?