Ask Carroll

[steve shearer]

Nick you've alluded to a somewhat paradoxical concept, viz continuing evolution as a surfer versus the reality of declining powers. Where are you at now on that continuum?

Ha, awesome question

I'm at a point where I am aware that my best surfing performances are behind me. I'm definitely surfing better than I'd ever have imagined at 55 years of age, but that wouldn't have been possible without me getting into a lot of other water activities. My emotional investment in surfing sorta waxes and wanes in a way I have come to identify as a product of age, yet I try to feel this as a gift and allow myself to be lifted by the desire to surf when it arises -- when this occurs I feel all my skills and strengths fall into line and I still have amazing surfs, or amazing highs while surfing, at such times. But that means I also have to be able to let it go when I'm not feeling it and understand not to be troubled by that. I have technical things I want to work on but they require really good surf and I'm not feeling enough contact with high quality waves, which I find frustrating. I can't look too far ahead, but I know I have to be careful and avoid significant injuries from here on in or face a really hard older surfing age. I share a great affection and understanding with many other ultra committed surfers my age, like whenever I see Michael Ho we just automatically connect, boom, that's pretty funny.

Most of all I guess I am trying to let surfing be a lot of different things at once for me when I'm in the water -- every surf has the potential to become a channel to memory and bring me back to younger versions of myself, which feels rare and a deep stroke of fortune.

I appreciate the candour. I asked because I did some long form interviews recently with Wayne Lynch and we spoke about the topic. It's interesting to me. Watching these great surfers: Greenough, McTavish, Lynch,Brock, Baddy Treloar, Derek Hynd etc etc age and how they deal with it.

[Davros]

No major illness by 50. Check
No major injury by 50. Check
Surfing 3-4 times plus at week at 50. Check.
Can surf for 2-5 hours if required at 50. Check
Feel like your holding your own in the line up. Check.
Your not a complete douche and have an egalitarian view in the ocean.Check.
You lot are luckier than a lot of other guys and girls.Lucky.

[ctd]

Nick, did you see the 'stab in the dark' board test

http://stabmag.com/welcome-to-stab-in-the-dark/

Stab invited the best shapers in the world to each create a surfboard. It would be for a mystery world tour surfer who weighs 80kg and stands six feet tall. The board was to be supplied as a cleanskin. No markings. No stickers. No pencil on the stringer. Nothing identifiable.

No real question. Unless you had a comment.

So here is my actual question: surfing in the Olympics. Yea or Nay?

I noticed some comments in surfer mag

http://www.surfermag.com/features/shoul ... G43uFEO.97

which showed two very distinctive schools of thought - most competitive surfers were in favour; most people who are surfers but not competitive were very much against. Its not clear whether the fault line is between competition and non competition/lifestyle views of surfing (because clearly we already have an element of competition) or the corporatisation of the Olympics or that some people don't want surfing to be that much in the mainstream. Or something else.

That said, were I a competitive sportsman and someone said 'want to win a gold medal' I would say 'sure', even I thought it was a stupid idea to include my sport in the Olympics.

Of course, there is also the broader question as to whether the Olympics should add a sport which already has a highly developed competition structure, which means the Olympics will never be particularly important anyway (tennis!)

Anyway, that's my question.

[The Mighty Sunbird]

No major illness by 50. Check
No major injury by 50. Check
Surfing 3-4 times plus at week at 50. Check.
Can surf for 2-5 hours if required at 50. Check
Feel like your holding your own in the line up. Check.
Your not a complete douche and have an egalitarian view in the ocean.Check.
You lot are luckier than a lot of other guys and girls.Lucky.

[Nick Carroll]

So here is my actual question: surfing in the Olympics. Yea or Nay?

I don't care really.

There's something a bit kooky about the great Olympic surfing quest, at least that's how it feels to me, like surfing has very successfully constructed its own prestige competitive highlights a la the world pro title, the Eddie etc, why go scrabbling after the good graces of a bunch of European sportocrats?

Plus they always go on about how wave pools are the great answer to making the Olympics, well I am sorry, but wave pools are superkooky things, if there's one thing about great surfing that should be seared front and centre in our minds right now for example, following that Fiji event, it's the value of the open ocean and its amazing challenge. How could Olympic surfing in a wave pool be anything but ridiculous compared to 10' Cloudbreak, I mean come on.

The Olympics are the peak for numerous other sports, but for surfing, they'd never be the peak.

All that said I bet it'd be fun for everyone involved and it'd be great to have an Olympic gold medal in your trophy cabinet, whooppeee! If people wanna get busy trying to pull it off I'm not gonna try to stop 'em. In fact I will look on from a sensible distance with what you might call amused interest.

[Beerfan]

Mcsurfing!

[Nick Carroll]

Oh thinking more about the Olympic thing, it would be v interesting to see the teams being fielded by some of the nations who are signed on to the ISA's membership list

A brief scan of the list reveals (this is just a few): Algeria, Aruba, Bulgaria, Dubai, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Russia, Somalia, Taiwan ... even Wales!

You've got to admit it'd be cool, or at least pretty surreal, to see all these nations' teams lining up to take on Australia, the USA and Brazil - or even Costa Rica, who just won the ISA World Surfing Games in Nicaragua. (Yep, Costa Rica is the world surfing champion nation)

I'm being straight faced here! The Olympics might be the only chance we ever get to see the global surfing family all together. Tell me you cnuts wouldn't be there cheering.

[foamy]

Surely some of the other Olympic sport applicants are more deserving; like Bridge, Tug of War or Frisbie (I mean, Flying Disc).

[foamy]

Actually, if it is a wave pool, Olympic surfing could add a higher fitness ingredient. 1/2 hour heats, for each surfer the 15 best scoring waves counted.

Scoring could be done by computer, take out the Russian judge, a sensor on the back of the board.
-Speed
-number, angle and amplitide of turns
-critical part of the wave positioning
-time above the lip.
All factored in for an instant wave score.
Actually, the progressive individual wave score could display while the surfer is on the wave. Run back and get another one. Top 15 wave scores counted. I'd watch a bit of that.

China would win, but good luck to them.

[rmb]

Nick what are the waves like in the Telos compared to the Ments in your experience.

[godsavetheking]

... even Wales!

Laugh it up, Nick Carroll, laugh it up. But know this; behind the breathlessly kooky, slightly amateur hour facade of Surf Snowdonia is sequestred a team of gnomic Brailsford-esque obsessives already plotting a clean sweep of the medals at the 2024 Olympics, where a Welsh team of hand-picked, exhaustively drilled midgets will trip the light fantastic on the 'six foot' wave pool waves, in the process embarrassing a swaggeringly overconfident team of 80+kg Australian giants led by veteran captain Owen "Cue Ball" Wright.

And as the standard shortboard fell from mainstream grace, its unfavoured otherness damned with the curled lip addition of 'high performance', so surfing will become 'sea surfing', its contests quickly abandoned by broadcaster, WSL and sponsor alike as all embrace the merits of a package that starts on time, runs on time and most importantly is cheap. Events like the 2015 Fiji Pro will be no more and tales of the derring-do contained within will be confined to the ramblings of dribbling dotards. In time, Australia as a competitive surfing nation will be crushed under the Russian and Chinese juggernaut. So there

[steve shearer]

do dribbling dotards get free beer?

if so sign me up.

[foamy]

I think sea surfers just drink home brew.

[Beerfan]

Tyrion Lannister would totally be the welsh midget surfing team captain

[godsavetheking]

do dribbling dotards get free beer?

if so sign me up.

Yup. And a wristy on bed bath day

[Nick Carroll]

Nick what are the waves like in the Telos compared to the Ments in your experience.

Umm the northern half is mostly a wide selection of softer playful waves that can be enjoyed by anyone, with a couple of higher intensity spots that wake up on the right swell. For some reason that northern part of the area doesn't seem to pull in as much swell as the Mentawais or the southern part of the Telos, maybe not even as much as Nias, something's going on there, who knows what.

The southern bit has a few more challenging surf spots, seems to me that there's still a few waiting to be surfed or maybe even found.

I don't really think the area as a whole can match the real gold in the Mentawais, the likes of Teles, Rifles, the right etc, at least I haven't seen their like up there.

Telo does also seem a bit more affected by the Sumatran mainland weather-wise than the Mentawais, esp the southern Mentawais feel a bit more dislocated from mainland weather patterns.

What the Telos are good for is way less people, and lots of waves that are relatable to normal surfing skills, you're not riding heavy 6-8' drainers on to half exposed reef up there.

[Nick Carroll]

... even Wales!

Laugh it up, Nick Carroll, laugh it up. But know this; behind the breathlessly kooky, slightly amateur hour facade of Surf Snowdonia is sequestred a team of gnomic Brailsford-esque obsessives already plotting a clean sweep of the medals at the 2024 Olympics, where a Welsh team of hand-picked, exhaustively drilled midgets will trip the light fantastic on the 'six foot' wave pool waves, in the process embarrassing a swaggeringly overconfident team of 80+kg Australian giants led by veteran captain Owen "Cue Ball" Wright.

And as the standard shortboard fell from mainstream grace, its unfavoured otherness damned with the curled lip addition of 'high performance', so surfing will become 'sea surfing', its contests quickly abandoned by broadcaster, WSL and sponsor alike as all embrace the merits of a package that starts on time, runs on time and most importantly is cheap. Events like the 2015 Fiji Pro will be no more and tales of the derring-do contained within will be confined to the ramblings of dribbling dotards. In time, Australia as a competitive surfing nation will be crushed under the Russian and Chinese juggernaut. So there

"Sea surfing", christ god save, one can only hope.

You are forgetting something that may add to this bizarre midget-pool-domination theory and that's climate change. Like by 2100 many of the great "sea waves" (Pipe etc) will be cactus thanks to a two metre ocean level increase. Pipeline will be a memory, Welsh midgets will own the sport, and we'll all be dead.

[Slobadan Madicubich]

boogie board comp seems like an ideal fit for the olympcs