What’s wrong with Olympic surfing? Nothing if you ask Siqi Yang. Photo: ISA
Reviewing various surfing website’s coverage of the first day of the 2024 Olympic event had me asking the question: What’s wrong with the Olympics? As in, what’s with all the trivial whining, snark and sarcasm in the face of what would be, by almost any standard a fine day of surfing competition?
I read one full paragraph lamenting how Jack “Robbo” Robinson was relegated to second-place in his first-round heat by a dramatic, last-second, apparently (to this particular scribe) unfairly scored barrel by his competitor Joan Duru. Oh, boo-hoo—it was non-elimination heat! And the whining continued from there. The contest format, with its requisite breaks between heats (Look at all the waves they’re missing!”) the commentary, with the gall to be geared to a mainstream audience (like, duh!), the teams at the mic raked over the reef for mispronouncing Teahupo’o, by critics and commenters who still refer to the spot as “Chopes”; universally-loved 1988 world champ Barton “Gandalf” Lynch even being put in the hot seat for his efforts to explain to the non-surfing audience what a “tube” is (how else would you say it other than it’s when the wave is shaped like, well, like a tube?).
I laughed at one bit where a website wag complained about the lack of post-heat interviews, ordinarily one of the most consistently criticized elements of regular World Surf League events. Hey, but at least you could understand what the writer was getting at, if not their grasp of irony — one surfing website featured onsite coverage so cryptic as to be virtually incomprehensible, leading one usually supportive commenter to posit that the correspondent must’ve been drunk.
Full disclosure: I’m on the record for having regularly questioned the decision to hold the 2024 Olympic surfing event at Teahupo’o, my misgivings based entirely on wave conditions. Small and blown-out: anti-climactic, visually disappointing, impossible to judge, and a sad result after all that work. Fifteen to 20-feet: most of the women competitors, and even a few of the men, would have to stay in the boat, with the heralded event being reduced to a WCT All-Star freesurf session. But in the face of Round One’s very reasonable conditions — plenty of high-scoring barrels, not to mention some great wipeouts — I was surprised by the manner in which so much of the surf media took the event to task.
On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t have been — with very few exceptions, the surf media has never been a friend to contests. Back in the 1960s, the Makaha International Surf Championships, the most prestigious event of its day, was regularly vilified for various sins, most often related to format and judging that didn’t keep pace with the times. Media representation in the early 1970s, that period basically just an extension of the trippy, late 1960s, was almost uniformly anti-contest. MacGillivray-Freeman’s classic 1972 film Five Summer Stories featured the greatest anti-contest segment ever (stream it and be dazzled), while coverage of the ’72 World Contest in San Diego in both major surf magazines amounted to nothing more than a giant pile-on. The general vibe back then was that if you were going to have a surf contest it should be held at five-star Pipeline, and even then, why not just give the first-place trophy to Gerry Lopez.
There was a very brief period when during professional surfing’s nascent development in the late 1970s, early 1980s, the surf media’s coverage was fairly positive, though much of it was obviously geared more toward pleasing the event sponsors/monthly advertisers than actual surf magazine or movie audiences (in the magazine’s case, reader survey after survey saw contest coverage way down on the list of popular topics, with exotic, new perfect-wave discoveries always taking the top spot.) But as the world tour grew, so did the level of whining. The first Stubbies Contest, held at Burleigh Heads, Australia in 1977, and featuring the first man-on-man format, was widely lauded, and sure, there was reverent coverage of the occasional Eddie Aikau tribute event at Waimea Bay, a bit of frothing if Jeffrey’s Bay got all-time, and plenty of love for good Pipeline (with the “why not just hold every event at Pipeline” ethic, birthed in the early ’70s, still going strong today). But for the most part, contest coverage right up to the new millennium predictably focused on bad conditions, bad judging and bad vibes.
Of course, the Age of the Internet kicked whining about surf contests into high gear, primarily by fueling the fires of discontent with the comment section. The introduction of instantaneous, hyper-critical comment culture found many surf journalists, now virtually held hostage by comment terrorists, forced to pander to this new generation of grumblers by providing relentlessly critical, sarcastic, and even vitriolic coverage to keep those clicks coming. Often taking it to the point of absurdity. For example: regularly deriding the WCT as a shitty wave parade, despite the vast majority of its events being held at some of the world’s premier spots; only a couple of beachbreaks on the schedule, and neither looking, or surfing, anything like Southside Huntington Beach Pier.
So I guess I was naïve to think it would be any different for the 2024 Olympic surfing event. Especially considering my previous stance on our sport being included in the Games — never thought it was a good fit, regardless of where it was held. But after watching the first day of competition I’ve completely changed my tune (commenters, have at it!) Not because ubiquitous champions like Robbo, Ethan Ewing and John John got some nice barrels, which in conditions like these they could do in their sleep. Not even watching much of the women’s competition, with some great rides by WCT regulars like Caroline Marks and Tatiana Webb-Weston. No, it was mostly because of what I witnessed in one particular heat, women’s Round One, heat number seven, which featured a performance that brought to mind my all-time favorite Olympic story, one that best illustrates just why the Games are different from all other competitions.
It took place during the 1968 Summer Olympics, held in Mexico City. While the thin air at the venue’s altitude (7,350 feet) was credited in some record-breaking sprints, it tore up endurance events like the Game’s climactic marathon, with numerous competitors being forced to quit mid-race due to hypoxia-related exhaustion. Nevertheless, a winner was eventually crowned, the medal ceremony concluded, and the packed stadium slowly emptied. But then a local radio station reported that a single runner was still out on the course, literally hours behind the winner, but still gamely pressing on. He was Tanzania’s John Stephen Akhwari, a notable marathoner who early in the race had stumbled, badly injuring his knee and lower leg. Rather than pull out, however, he limped along, painfully ticking off the miles, virtually alone in the growing darkness. Then an amazing thing happened. As word of the radio report spread, fans and camera crews began streaming back into the stadium, until the stands were again almost full. When Akhwari finally crept onto the oval track for his last lap, hours behind the winner, he was carried along on winged feet by the thunderous cheers of the crowd. Afterward he was asked why, so far behind the leaders, he didn’t drop out, as did so many other competitors.
“My country did not send me 5,000 miles to start the race,” Akhwari said. “They sent me 5,000 miles to finish the race.”
So you go, Siqi Yang.
