Making waves on world stage
GOLD Coast Tourism has thrown its weight behind the city’s bid to host the Global Wave Conference in 2020 – a game-changing year for surfing that will see it debut as an Olympic sport.
A biennial event hosted by the Save the Waves Coalition, the world authority for World Surfing Reserves, the GWC unites the best international minds from the surfing, conservation and innovation communities to tackle the world’s most challenging ocean issues.
The 2020 GWC would be held the week before the Quiksilver and Roxy Pro at Snapper in March – four months before surfing is introduced to the Olympics at the Tokyo Games.
The Coast bid is being led by Gold Coast Tourism and former world longboard champion Andrew McKinnon, who championed the city’s successful bid to have the world-renowned stretch of coastline from Burleigh Heads to Snapper Rocks declared the eighth World Surfing Reserve in 2016.
Mr McKinnon said the GWC would bring more than 400 delegates from around the world to discuss challenges surrounding the global explosion in surfing’s popularity.
“It’s an international surfing summit that would bring academics, industry and sport leaders and world surfing champions to the Coast and would also involve Southern Cross University, Bond University and Griffith University,” he said.
“WSL World Tour surfers including CEO Sophie Goldschmidt would be invited to participate and speak at the conference alongside the likes of Surfing Australia chair and seven-time world women’s champ Layne Beachley.”
Mr McKinnon said Olympic surfers and coaches and International Surfing Association president Fernando Aguerre would also be invited.
“Mr Aguerre is the man responsible for talking the IOS into accepting surfing as an Olympic sport,” he said.
The Coast’s surf industry pumps an estimated $3.3 billion into the local economy each year, with the spend by local surfers on surf equipment, getting to the beach and riding waves estimated to total more than $230 million a year.
Mr McKinnon will travel to the US next March to present the bid to the fifth GWC in Santa Cruz, California.
“There will be stiff competition from previous host Cornwall, in the UK, and the latest host city Santa Cruz, but I’m confident (we) can secure this significant event the same way we beat competition from Noosa and Brazil to become a WSR in 2016,” he said.
Mr McKinnon said the success of the inaugural two-day International Surfing Symposium hosted by the Gold Coast World Surfing Reserve earlier this year would help strengthen the bid.
Gold Coast Tourism and the Main Roads and Transport Department recently signed off on new local landmark signs along the M1 pointing to the city’s WSR beaches.
The signs, featuring local photographer Sean Scott’s image of waves peeling from Snapper to Kirra, are at Exit 95 northbound at Tugun and Exit 85 southbound at Burleigh.