Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Steve Pike
THE news that surfing will be part of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo has been met with mixed reaction.
Concerns that corporate interests will hijack the purity of surfing have been voiced. That’s simply not true. Corporate interests have already done that.
The vote by the International Olympics Committee (IOC) in Rio this week has also led to assurances that the real ocean would be used, in Tokyo anyway.
So we can forget the talk about wave pools, the Kelly Slater Wave Co and the professional World Surf League … for now.
After all, it’s meant to be amateur sport, and I think the IOC quite likes the link to the old school of surfing. Who knows, perhaps surfing will actually rediscover some of its purity through the amateur pursuit of excellence, rather than results driven by lucre.
The Olympics has a connection to surfing that many people don’t know. More than a century ago, when he won a gold medal for the 100m freestyle in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, Hawaiian surfer Duke Kahanamoku said surfing should be part of the Games.
Truth is, who knows how wistful the context, and what he really meant.
The few who had even heard of surfing only knew it in relation to Hawaii. They would have perhaps have heard that only royal families surfed in ancient Hawaii.
Perhaps his comment was an affirmation of Hawaiian identity that spoke more about how serious the world should take the proud surfing lineage of his ancestors.
He was speaking, of course, before movies like Gidget, and later Endless Summer, sparked a population explosion of surfers, surf travel and a multi-billion dollar industry.
Now the old ballies of the bureaucratic IOC want to target the “youth”, that amorphous mass that no one understands, but wants to appropriate for their cool and their energy and their massive spending power.
Surfing joins skateboarding, baseball, softball, karate and “sports climbing” in the Games, which according to the IOC was the “most comprehensive evolution of the Olympic programme in modern history”.
IOC President Thomas Bach said during the vote, “We want to take sport to the youth. With the many options that young people have, we cannot expect any more that they will come automatically to us. We have to go to them.”
In terms of format, a twoweek waiting period at an undetermined surf spot near Tokyo will determine the best days needed to host two events for 20 male surfers and 20 female surfers.
The IOC has also pointed out that the additional sport codes would not be binding on future host cities.
If the IOC is so bent on the real ocean, it’s going to be difficult for an inland city to have surfing in their Games. But International Surfing Association president Fernando Aguerre said there was the possibility of wave pools in the future.
“The reason why ( wave pools are not considered for Tokyo) is that no (large-scale) competition has been held on any man-made wave. The IOC is very careful not to ask host nations to invest in technologies that potentially have no use after the games. That is a whole section of the IOC called legacy and sustainability. Unless there is proven viable use for the construction after, it won’t be pursued,” he told theinertia.com.
Sketches of a skateboard stadium have already been mooted for Tokyo, but in reality, the organisers will prob- ably opt for temporary structures, with scaffolding for stands.
Another problem is that summer in Japan does not generally mean good waves. They may need longer than two weeks! Has the IOC learned how to read the swell charts?
Let the other games begin
MEMBERS of the 2016 South African team heard the news of the Olympics inclusion waiting to board a flight from Los Angeles to San Jose in Costa Rica for the INS ISA World Surfing Games, which begins at Jaco Beach today and ends next Sunday August 14th. Twenty six teams from have arrived in Costa Rica for the historic event, and no doubt the buzz around the Olympics will be extra motivation for the younger members of the squad to do well.
Weather Tip
CRANKING surf runs this weekend. A big 10ft+ west swell struck yesterday. Today, it still looks solid 8ft in clean light SE early, going fresh SE. Muizenberg mild onshore 3ft going choppy and onshore. Tomorrow, an even bigger 10ft swell is back with fresh clean SE, though it has southerly in the direction later. Muizenberg messy 3-4’.