Ask Carroll

[MrMik]

I think that the artistic expression part of surfing will always be hard to judge, but that there is a measurable and potentially objectively measurable component to it: Power surfing.

In essence, surfing is the art of extracting energy from a wave while it is propagating through water, and then doing something creative with that energy. To achieve this, the wave's energy needs to be transferred into your body mass in the form of kinetic energy. Staying close to the breaking part of the wave increases the amount of energy that can be accessed in this way.

I think this can be measured with modern equipment (cameras, doppler (speed) cameras, accelerometer and GPS), mathematics and computers. The mathematical equivalent of a high score for "Power Surfing" might be something like "The sum of the products of g-force multiplied by time".

Or in other words: "S/he who pulls off the hardest turns for the longest time, wins."

I think that this is probably synonymous with "highest speed" most of the time, and that style issues will sort themselves out, because only a combination of very good technique, wave selection, fitness and athleticism will produce the goods. Style - when it appears in amounts above those unavoidable for athletes reaching this level of performance - will be obvious to astute observers.

As form follows function, style in surfing will follow the function of extracting maximum energy from the wave.

This can be measured objectively (if you ignore the sound of Heisenberg turning in his grave).

[Nick Carroll]

Nick do you enjoy watching women's surfing? Before The Maui Pro I was selling all my surfboards and taking up photography but this has reignited not only my interest in pro surfing but the sport as a whole.

Also as a bonus it gives me plenty for the wank bank. Does Women's surfing do the same for you.

OK, yes I like watching girls surfing and I like surfing with 'em

I do not put that in the wank bank, no.

[Roy_Stewart]

I'm with you most of the way except that;

1) Experiencing more G force, or turning hard does not increase the amount of energy extracted from the wave, it just redirects it.

2) The 'form follows function' idea is the antithesis of the style and tricks criteria, and yet I notice that you still use the notion that the purpose of surfing is to 'do something creative' with the wave energy. If we didtch the creativity demand then what's left? We still have wave energy used for movement.

3) How about length of ride as the only criterion? That would change things a bit and it isn't subjective. It's also a measure of efficiency. Of course the asp would go broke doing it and shapers would need to extend their shaping bays, but no pain no gain.

If surfing is seen as art, rather than something else, then why do we need rules for the art which determine a particular style? It's like some government sponsored salon or communist political ballet.

It makes me laugh when comp surfers are hailed as creative when they all look approximately the same. The creativity is like a fashion show where everyone wears black suits.

[Nick Carroll]

btw I think there is a fair bit of overthinking going on here about judging and surfing. It's not that abstruse.

Try going back to first principles, i.e. your own perceptions. When you're out surfing next, see how you make your judgements about who is surfing well and who isn't.

Yep sure enough you make those judgements. You can pretend you don't, later on, but you do.

Now imagine spending a fair bit of time focusing on that and applying it via a clearly set criteria over a long period of time. Yep you might find yourself making some pretty acute judgements in the process.

That's about how complicated it is.

re various companies sponsoring "free surfers", well that's been going on for a very long time, it is not a new phenomenon. It has a range of advantages for start up companies. First, you don't have to spend the $750,000-plus a year it takes to acquire the services of a top 32 pro in the Western surf market. Second, you don't have to wait for five to 10 years while your junior superstar works his way up the WQS/WCT ladder, if indeed he can. Third, you can more easily impose your yet to be fully constructed image on the public view via a surfer who has not already very painfully constructed his own career through the incredibly tough and unforgiving medium of pro competition. The fact remains that the vast majority of super pro surfers, i.e. people who are paid over half a million bucks a year to be a surfer, are WCT pro competitors, and the reasons for that are glaringly obvious - they actually fcuken do something. They put their efforts and emotions and so forth on the line in public confrontation with athletes of similar or better ability. Meaning is thus constructed where otherwise very little exists. That's how sport operates. It's like big brother or whatever except the people involved are super skilled and utterly committed.

[Roy_Stewart]

btw I think there is a fair bit of overthinking going on here about judging and surfing. It's not that abstruse.

Try going back to first principles, i.e. your own perceptions. When you're out surfing next, see how you make your judgements about who is surfing well and who isn't.

Yep sure enough you make those judgements. You can pretend you don't, later on, but you do.

Now imagine spending a fair bit of time focusing on that and applying it via a clearly set criteria over a long period of time. Yep you might find yourself making some pretty acute judgements in the process.

That's about how complicated it is.

Yep, but it doesn't follow that we use the asp criteria and that's the crux of the matter.

I've observed beachgoer behaviour and the criteria they tend to go for is length of ride, wave count, speed, and colour, as do many surfers when it comes down to it, but with some it causes a cognitive conflict and visible suffering due to pre programming by the million dollar industry which 'actually does something'.

You might be surprised at how disinterested average beach observers are when someone does a 'hop'... a punt or whatever. They don't even seem to notice. It has to be spivved up by mega media to get people to care about it. I mention average beach goers because their behaviour is unaffected.

Dominance is another aspect... we instinctively know who is dominating. It's primeval.

confrontation with athletes of similar or better ability. Meaning is thus constructed where otherwise very little exists.

Meaning doesn't exist without the tour?

That's off the chart level BS. Everything has meaning.

That's how sport operates. It's like big brother or whatever except the people involved are super skilled and utterly committed.

... and owned.... <:

[Drailed]

Nick do you enjoy watching women's surfing? Before The Maui Pro I was selling all my surfboards and taking up photography but this has reignited not only my interest in pro surfing but the sport as a whole.

Also as a bonus it gives me plenty for the wank bank. Does Women's surfing do the same for you.

OK, yes I like watching girls surfing and I like surfing with 'em

I do not put that in the wank bank, no.

Agreed. Nothing worse then seeing blokes try and flirt/crack on with chicks in the surf. As if it's not intimidating enough for a lot of them to be surrounded by blokes out there, just be nice and show some respect.

[el rancho]

re various companies sponsoring "free surfers", well that's been going on for a very long time, it is not a new phenomenon. It has a range of advantages for start up companies. First, you don't have to spend the $750,000-plus a year it takes to acquire the services of a top 32 pro in the Western surf market. Second, you don't have to wait for five to 10 years while your junior superstar works his way up the WQS/WCT ladder, if indeed he can. Third, you can more easily impose your yet to be fully constructed image on the public view via a surfer who has not already very painfully constructed his own career through the incredibly tough and unforgiving medium of pro competition. The fact remains that the vast majority of super pro surfers, i.e. people who are paid over half a million bucks a year to be a surfer, are WCT pro competitors, and the reasons for that are glaringly obvious - they actually fcuken do something. They put their efforts and emotions and so forth on the line in public confrontation with athletes of similar or better ability. Meaning is thus constructed where otherwise very little exists. That's how sport operates. It's like big brother or whatever except the people involved are super skilled and utterly committed.

no thats how surfing currently works.

have a look at skateboarding.
it's all about videos and mags. comps are for absolute gimps, tony hawk made vert comps briefly cool because of the 900 but otherwise its as lame as that ISA abortion trying to get into the olympics

[Nick Carroll]

confrontation with athletes of similar or better ability. Meaning is thus constructed where otherwise very little exists.

Meaning doesn't exist without the tour?

That's off the chart level BS. Everything has meaning.

Sure. I should have added "in the eye of the beholder". We all have our own internal sense of meaning arising from what we think and do. But competition constructs meaning for the viewer. Its the whole if a tree falls in the forest thing.

[Cranked]

Would the world of surfing be much different if the whole surf comp thing ceased to exist? I have a sneaking suspicion that it wouldn't.

Surfing is so enjoyable that it would carry on regardless.

I'm mildy interested in the competition scene, but on a good day I'd rather sit on the cliff at Padang Padang or Gnaraloo and just watch.

[Nick Carroll]

I think itd be radically different. It's clearly nowhere near the be all and end all but theres a strong argument to be made that competition is part of surfing's cultural dna. Pre- Euro Hawaiians frequently held surf contests and gambled on the winners and losers, the contests were a great excuse for a day out and blended in with other Hawaiian sports like grass sledding. It was part of the fun of the sport. Here in Australia its played a big part in how we've seen ourselves and how we've behaved going way back to at least the early 1920s. You can feel the seed of competition even in the way people move around each other in the lineup, and it subtly informs numerous conversations and actions around the way we think about surfing - heck its informed most of the past few pages of this thread for example. Competition and its effects are woven deep into the fabric of surf history and culture in so many ways I think it's kind of impossible to picture what modern surfing would look like without it.

Imagining what it would look like if surfing contests just ceased to exist today, well you'd have to be able to picture a world where everyone who's got a hand in a surf contest just sorta disappeared. That's a lot of people. Right now for instance, there's a bit over 18,000 surfers wandering the world's coasts who at one time or another have been ranked as a pro surfer. That's from Medina and Fanning right back to the guy who was ranked 65th in the world in 1976. (His name escapes me for the moment.) There's also 22,000 surfer members of Surfing Australia; most of them are semi involuntary, being automatically counted in the numbers because they are members of an Australian boardriders club, but they all go in pointscore contests every month or so. Then there's all the surfers and other people around those numbers, the shapers, parents, older surfers who never got past the amateur ranks, all the way up to the Greville Mitchells and Dirk Ziffs, the people who plough millions into supporting and building the top end. There's Midget Farrelly, Nat Young, MR, my lil brother, Phyllis O'Donnell, Layne Beachley, Steph Gilmore, Barton Lynch, Damien Hardman, Martin Potter, Rabbit, PT, etc etc etc. Three's all the employees of the various organisations, the ASP, the ISA and so forth. And I guess there is also all the surfers who were encouraged to get passionate about surfing as a result of having absorbed some of all that somehow through surf mags, webcasts, blah blah blah.

See what I mean, it's kind of impossible to un-weave what's been woven over the past 100 years or whatever.

[steve shearer]

There's a distinction to be made between professional comp surfing as it exists now and comp surfing per se.

People will always compete, it's natural, it's normal. It's part of our primate past. We compete for resources, for glory etcetc. We also co-operate as social beings. A paradox.

But if professional surfing ceased to exist or radically transformed I don't think it would have material effect on the vast majority of surfers experience of surfing.

I already believe there has been a major decoupling of the average rec surfers aspirations and experiences from Pro surfing. Viz a viz all the arguments that have gone before this one, the rising popularity of festivals like Byron Bay, books, movies etc etc.

And to answer the original posters question: I surf with Rasta a lot. I know he thinks surfing can't be judged and does see alot of pro surfing carry-on as superfluous and arbitrary. So,yes, top surfers do think like that.

[ctd]

Would the world of surfing be much different if the whole surf comp thing ceased to exist? I have a sneaking suspicion that it wouldn't.

But how would you know who was a good surfer without competition?

I think this can be measured with modern equipment (cameras, doppler (speed) cameras, accelerometer and GPS), mathematics and computers. The mathematical equivalent of a high score for "Power Surfing" might be something like "The sum of the products of g-force multiplied by time".

Do you own a coffee machine? Are you one of those people who measures exactly 23 grams and tinkers until the pour is 27.8 seconds?

have a look at skateboarding.
it's all about videos and mags. comps are for absolute gimps, tony hawk made vert comps briefly cool because of the 900 but otherwise its as lame as that ISA abortion trying to get into the olympics

I had skateboarding in the back of my mind with my original question re how non comp surfers view comp surfers; although skateboarding allows for much greater 'variety' of location than surfing (ie surfing is a wave; skateboarding can be the vert, ramps, downhill, urban etc etc) so I imagine there are many disparate schools of thought and, in the traditional internecine manner, each think the other is completely wrong.

At least - from what I can see - surfing isn't like ice skating, where the world champ is just expected to win and commentators openly say 'that was a great performance, but they wont win the Olympic gold because they aren't the world champs, maybe next time once they work their way up the hierachy'. Also, not as many sequins

[Cranked]

Competition and its effects are woven deep into the fabric of surf history and culture in so many ways I think it's kind of impossible to picture what modern surfing would look like without it.

At my local surf spots? Just the same as it is now, 99.9% of surfers don't enter any form of organised surf competition. However, you're right about the inordinate cultural impact of that 0.1% that do compete.

[Nick Carroll]

Well I don't think it is .1% overall, though maybe it is where you surf cranked. As mentioned above, there are 22,000 surfers belonging to boardriders clubs in Australia right now. The Aust Bureau of Statistics reckons there is about 226,000 committed surfers in the country (like people who surf regularly as opposed to once a year or less). So in Australia, its somewhere around 10%. I would hazard a guess that when it comes to the number of most committed surfers among that 226,000, the 10% belonging to boardriders' clubs would be over represented. That might be a clearer picture of where a sense and knowledge of competition surfing dwells in Australia.

[steve shearer]

Well I don't think it is .1% overall, though maybe it is where you surf cranked. As mentioned above, there are 22,000 surfers belonging to boardriders clubs in Australia right now. The Aust Bureau of Statistics reckons there is about 226,000 committed surfers in the country (like people who surf regularly as opposed to once a year or less).

I don't think that number is accurate.

Most numbers are up in the low millions ; from Taronga Park's latest shark attack scientific paper :"The
popularity of surfing in current-day Australia was highlighted in a survey administered in 2005–2006, which estimated that ,12% of the adult population of Australian cities participated in the sport of surfing, resulting in ,1.68 million recreational surfers in Australia"

I think there is a much bigger reservoir of urban weekend warrior or once a fortnight/month surfers who aren't counted in those ABS figures, but who should still be counted as surfers.

[Nick Carroll]

yeah maybe. I doubt it v much myself. I'm not doubting there's more than 226,000 surfers in Australia at any one time but a significant proportion these days - especially at the well known or more urbanised spots - are tourists or other non Australian citizens. The Sweeney sports survey figures, one of which is being quoted in the Taronga paper, lines up curiously over time with the ABS figures on how many Australians regularly go to the BEACH (roughly 14% of the overall population) as opposed to going surfing on a board. The smaller figure also sorta lines up with surfboard sales in Australia a bit more accurately.

anyway I do think the whole q is very interesting from numerous angles, I know for sure I have had a quite driven and restricted view of surfing and surf competition in the past thanks to my own generational influences and the surfers I grew up with (and my own nature which is highly competitive), but that view has broadened a lot over the past 20 years as I've learned more about the sport and I'm looking forward to tackling it in that broader context in various ways in coming years. There's a great book in pro surfing.

[Roy_Stewart]

Sure. I should have added "in the eye of the beholder". We all have our own internal sense of meaning arising from what we think and do. But competition constructs meaning for the viewer. Its the whole if a tree falls in the forest thing.

It's a bit different now that we have the net, video cameras, youtube etc.

The most 'meaning' I've experienced recently as a viewer was 'diamond of the desert, which wasn't a competition.

We all compete though, I'm horrrendously competitively minded in the surf, and always have been, but don't do it according to normal comp. criteria. In free surfing if you feel like a winner you probably are... it's a primeval pecking order thing, and there's also a subjective element.

The benefits of pro surfing for the general surfing population are obvious, but there's a downside as well.

[Roy_Stewart]

I read recently on Swaylocks that there are now 23 million surfers worldwide up from 3 million in 2001 ( from memory those are the figures) which seems like nonsense to me. Perhaps a study concocted by a company for a loan?