After the huge success of the indoor sprint championships at the London Boat Show, Bill reckons we’ve got a way to go yet with the competition scene here in NZ…I must confess to being somewhat frustrated with the state of competition in stand up paddleboarding, particularly here in NZ. Some huge opportunities are being missed here. Why all this emphasis on long distance racing??? It’s like we had the full olympic panapoly to choose from – and we just chose the marathon. Why??? Actually, it’s no great mystery – competition tends to end up being organised by the guys who are good at it. And there’s nothing like a long distance SUP race to challenge a fit athlete. But it’s hugely elitist – in that Joe Average simply doesn’t have a chance. He’ll enter a race to see what it’s like, and quickly find himself at or near the back, paddling along as part of a long and spread-out procession, with nothing other than the finish line to look forward to. The odds are that he won’t bother doing it again. And what of the spectators? Long distance racing is about as interesting as watching paint dry. We have a wonderful, colourful, good looking sport here – and TV is interested. So the cameras start rolling, someone says ready steady go – and everybody f*&%s off!! Eventually reappearing as a long procession, heading directly towards the camera. We couldn’t have made it worse if we’d tried.

However, just imagine if races were only a few minutes long – and had lots of corners to keep it all interesting. Maybe even obstacles. And after you’d finished and got your breath back, you had another one, but this time the guy who came last gets to set off first. Or the guy who came first has to do it this time with his legs tied together. Keep the emphasis totally on fun. Make it so that not only is everyone feeling like they’re in the thick of the action, but feeling like they have a chance of winning something. How much more inclusive would that be? To say nothing of how much spectacular…   Check out this pic from the indoor sprint racing at the London Boat Show. See all those spectators…

I’m writing this not long after the first Hyundai Surf Race, at Piha (in round one of the 2011 Hyundai Champ series). We had an awesome race, that basically put us out through the surf 4 times, and involved some running bits too. It only lasted about 20 minutes and the positions were changing all the time. A couple of big sets caused serious carnarge, there were some extremely dodgy collisions and interferences, but it was a blast. We all enjoyed it, the surf proved a great leveller (although still the best men won). And the spectators loved it. “highly entertaining!”, “great sport…”. To me it reaffirmed all my beliefs. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with long distance racing – it’s a perfectly valid form of competition. But why is it basically the only competition on offer, other than waves…? We need to be thinking much more outside the box here. The potential for SUP competition is absolutely awesome. Inside, on swimming pools, incredible potential for spectators, we should be playing ‘paddle polo’. Howsabout jousting tournaments, and other forms of ‘combat’. (All heavily padded and safe, of course – but fabulous potential!). Relay races. Obstacle races. Man-on-man contests around a set of very closely-spaced buoys (emulating the excellent windsurfing discipline of 6-buoy slalom ). Freestyle. (Where to start!!! Again, look what it did for windsurfing…). The list goes on. The potential is endless. Unfortunately the manufacturers aren’t particularly interested in any of this as it isn’t necessarily going to help them sell any more boards. However, it’s early days yet with the sport, we have a whole lot to look forward to.

What I particularly liked about the Piha Surf race was that two of the top three boards were the Naish 11′6 Nalu – a board that we used in our school as a beginner teaching board! A real nice, all-round board – and it beat lots of sophisticated race boards that cost twice as much. That’s the way it should be, for this sort of races.  Interestingly though, by the second Surf Race (down in Dunedin),  race boards dominated once again as the conditions were less radical. Which means that anyone serious about competition is going to have to be packing race boards and wave boards to the Hyundai events. What I’d like to see is an all-round class (maybe even with separate heats, so that the good guys can do it too, if they really want to), and competitors do both the race and the waves on that one board. If a class like that caught on, it would force the designers to really focus on producing brilliant all-round boards (undoubtedly one hell of a challenge) that would ultimately benefit us all…

And on the subject of waves…

I also have some thoughts on the wave tour. . I bow to no-one in my admiration of the Hyundair Long Board/SUP tour here in New Zealand, it’s fantastically well organised, runs like clockwork and delivers excellent competition. But it does mean that the SUP event gets judged under ISA rules and standards, and the direction that wave SUP is going (using ever shorter boards) may well end up becoming an issue. I certainly think that the criterion needs to be changed, particularly if we are going to start encouraging less skilled riders to have a go at competition. SUP is a different sport to surfing – we have a paddle. It allows us to do different things with our boards, and SUP has a whole lot of extra style and expression to bring to the party. However, the ISA judging criterion is (understandably!) all about smacking lips and tight turning. SUP style and expression does not have a place on the scoresheet yet. Which is especially ironic when the competition is part of a long board tour, and long boarding is meant to be much more about soul and style.

I love to see a good board 360. I think headstands are fun. If someone is out there laying down a lot of tricks and riding well, then they deserve to be rewarded for it. Particularly if the riding is utilising the paddle properly. Finishing the ride properly (remaining standing!), and showing skill getting out over the white water ought to count for something too, particularly in amateur contests when such things really show the all round ability of the rider. There’s no precedent for this in surfing, it’s taken for granted that surfers can duckdive and get out back, so unless the judges are already experienced SUPrs themselves, it wouldn’t even occur to them to look out for it, and they won’t have any way of including it in their score sheets anyway.,

If we go for this bigger picture approach, then SUP gives us the opportunity to have a highly entertaining contest in small surf. However, if we don’t encourage the funkiness and fun factor and keep people trying to get inventive in their riding, then small surf sup will soon be pretty uninteresting. Riders will put all their efforts into cranking one big hit, shortboard style. I imagine that in such conditions the organisers will have little choice but to stipulate that tricks and style count for more. In which case, what’s the threshold? At what point will ’short board style’ SUP surfing become more important than long board riding? Especially as the good guys are now riding ever smaller SUPs. The top guys in the SUP fleet at the Piha event were ripping on boards smaller than they’d be allowed to use in the longboard fleet. Er….

And the move to shorter boards has barely even started. Maybe we’re going to end up needing a short board SUP wave division, and a long board division. Because when people start riding ever smaller SUPs in competition, like the Starboard Impossible, we could end up with a really ironic situation if the current long board tour gets an event with really good conditions. The top longboarders are out there working it hard on their 9′ boards – but then the SUP division goes out on 6′6 boards and absolutely shred – banging out huge short board hits, aerials, the lot. And the neutral audience comes away saying oh wow, SUP is much more radical than those surfing…

Don’t get me wrong, these are merely musings. I’m not just a Mr Grumpy, ‘you’re all doing it wrong and I could do much better’…  I’m not criticising anyone. We’ve got some great competition going on here at the moment, and it’s definitely a start. However, nothing should ever be taken as perfect, and we should do our damndest to take on board  lessons hard learned in other sports.  Having seen first hand a fine and noble sport (windsurfing) disappear pretty much entirely up its own arsehole, simply because it persisted in taking itself in elitist, non-inclusive directions, I’d hate to see SUP go the same way. I don’t think it will, because it has such universal appeal. But there’s no doubt that we’ve barely even started to tap the potential yet, and if we did play our cards right, we could have a future where SUP events become hugely anticipated and enjoyable occasions offering fun, entertainment and competition for the entire family and all spectators too.  So I’m going to continue throwing out these thoughts – let me know what you think of them!?