lI SPOR TING
CLIVE GAMMON
No sport could ever have stood a better chance of being strangled at birth than surf- board riding. Maybe it's gone on for centur- ies in Hawaii or wherever, but its real birth- place was in the 'fifties in California and it came of age, in less than a decade, there and on the wide Pacific beaches of Australia:'And with what brassy hoo-ha did it see the light.
Even in Britain (main centres: Cornwall, Guernsey, West Wales, wherever the big surf is) the shops which sell surfing gear are pul- sating with the phoney mystique, the sun- and-sand, ten-bare-toes stuff. I suppose when you've sold somebody x Malibu board and maybe a wet suit for winter riding he is well- nigh fully equipped, so you have to try to
make him feel he needs pink knee-length pants with orange flowers on. posters of huge, blue, plastic waves at Waikiki, LPs of the awful, swede-faced Beach Boys, sweat-shirts with heroic or comic motifs.
Not surprisingly, with a lot of the lads the gear becomes an end in itself. A man I know in St Ives swears that British Leyland pro- duces special Minis for the Cornish market that come with roof-racks and nine-feet fibre-glass boards as standard equipment; certainly in Swansea a teenager is just nothing unless he has a clapped-out old car with a board on the rack. He. doesn't necessarily have to unstrap it, though. ever. But it's good to have the car parked there outside the surf-shop. good to lean against and watch the girls go by, as you thumb through a surfing magazine to learn any new additions to the special vocabulary that is carefully nurtured by the faceless ones who manage and profit by the whole deal somewhere in far-off California.
Still and all. On winter afternoons, occa- sionally I walk on the cliffs as far as a beach where long, glassy swells ride in from storm- centres far out in the Atlantic. From high up I often see strange dark beetle shapes on the water, almost motionless, riding the waves passively. They are surf-riders black from head to foot in rubber wet-suits, lying prone on their boards, just hand-paddling enough to keep head-on into the waves, waiting for the big one to come, when from flat, grotes- que water beetles they will stand and become superlatively graceful balletic. figures, sliding along the breaking lip.of the swell, balancing arms outstretched in unconscious bsauty.
don't think it ought to be a competitk e sport, though. It doesn't lend itself to it.
Watching the Britislschampionships in Ness - quay, Cornwall, a 'While back, it struck me forcibly that the clearest parallel with the
way that the titles were decided was, God
help us. ballroom dancing. A panel of judge, awarded marks for the length of rides and
for style. A good board rider is certainly a pretty stylish sight. But, inevitably, such a category of judgment caused competitors to indulge in fanciful gyrations, baroque twists on the wave-tops and similar cavortings. The point of board-riding was lost.
And what is the point of it? It seems to me that board-riding falls into that special
group of sports that depend on putting to use one or more of the elements. It belongs with dinghy-sailing, gliding, kayak-riding, even kite-flying.
I tried it once, but Rod Sumpter, who is probably the best British board-rider, was certainly right when he told me that you have to start before you are twenty years old (maybe he said you're too old at twenty, but that seems pushing it a bit). I think, though. that I can find a good substitute.
Small racing kayaks, the kind they use on mountain rivers, adapt themselves beautitul■ to the surf and last summer I tried one out. It was a demonic thing to handle, and next time I will pick a less crowded beach. I came screaming in onto the sand, scattering a group of large, seaside-postcard ladies who were paddling in the shallows. But before this contretemps I had felt the surging accelera- tion of the wave beneath me. I'm certainly goingcto try it again.
Previous page
