The newly-minted Longboard Tour Director settling into his new corner office at the WSL’s Santa Monica headquarters. Photo: WSL/Martin
Devon Howard speaks much the way you’d expect for a man who helped usher in the nuveau traditional longboard movement in the early 2000s. His words are laid down deliberately like footsteps on a nine-foot-plus log. An elevated level of calmness and tranquility comes across over the phone.
Late last month, the World Surf League announced sweeping changes to its World Longboard Tour. In previous years, the “tour” has in fact been a misnomer. In truth, WSL-sanctioned longboard world champions were decided at a single event in Taiwan, the Taiwan Open World Longboard Championships. But, for 2019 the WSL Longboard Tour will be a four-event series. And the League has recruited Howard to helm the whole thing as Longboard Tour Director.
When we caught up recently, Howard was a little over a week into his new role – getting his feet in the wax as it were – and about to head to Noosa Heads, Australia for the Longboard Tour’s first event of the year. With so much on his plate and a packed travel schedule, one would expect Howard would intone signs of stress. That couldn’t be further from the truth in what can only be described as an incredibly pleasant, personable conversation we had where Howard dished on the myriad details of the Longboard Tour’s future. Below are some of the most salient points:
Photo: WSL
On the History of the Longboard Tour
Starting back in 1986 was the first time they crowned a longboard world champion and that was Nat Young. And the way it worked back then was they had a couple events that would piggyback on the shortboard events. And some years later it evolved into a different format where they went with one world contest – kind of how they did it in the 1960s.
And then 2000-2003 it went back to a World Longboard Tour format, but this time they weren’t piggybacking on shortboard contests they were standalone events. I was part of those. I competed in them. And we went to some amazing places like Jeffrey’s Bay. And, you know, it didn’t catch on. We weren’t able to find a brand that really wanted to get behind it, so it reverted back to a one world contest again, and that was easier for a brand to get behind – one event rather than multiple – and for many years that brand was a company called Oxbow.
The last few years, Oxbow hasn’t been involved. The one world contest has been hosted by Taiwan and their tourism bureau put up the prize purse and put up the event and it’s been great. But, the one question mark for people was, “Would this be a more legit world title if we could have it be more than just one event?” And the challenge has been, how do you get the funding for that?
On Funding
The WSL decided that this year would be the first time where they would jump into a multi-event championship for longboard surfing. And the way they did that is they kept the final in Taiwan, because that community is really fired up to support longboarding. So, that event remains. But they’ve expanded to three other events and that’s starting in Noosa this week (March 7th-10th) and we won’t see the second event for many months, not until August. And that’s going to be in Galicia, Spain. Then a week later, when that concludes, we’ll be in Long Beach, New York. As you remember, some years ago there was a Quiksilver Pro there, and that town has been chomping at the bit to have another world-stage event in their town. So, they jumped in and they put up the money.
The surfer must perform controlled maneuvers in the critical section of the wave utilizing the entire board and wave using traditional longboard surfing. The surfer who performs this to the highest degree of difficulty with the most style, flow, and grace will receive the highest score for a ride. – Article 69 of the WSL Longboard Judging Criteria
The way this is working initially is there’s no brand behind it. Josh Kerr and the Airborne Series have Red Bull to make it all possible. What we’re going to be working toward and what we’re hoping is that we can get something similar with an appropriate brand that would want to get behind longboard surfing. But to do that we have to get the first event or two going.
On the Essence of Style
I read the criteria that exists which is really the guiding light of all of this. What is the judging criteria that really defines the type of surfing that we’ll be watching and enjoying on this tour? It says in Article 69 of the judging criteria for longboarding, which has been in effect for three years now, “The surfer must perform controlled maneuvers in the critical section of the wave utilizing the entire board and wave using traditional longboard surfing. The surfer who performs this to the highest degree of difficulty with the most style, flow, and grace will receive the highest score for a ride. Further to that above, the following are key elements for Judges to consider: noseriding and rail surfing, critical section of the wave, variety, speed and power, commitment, control, and footwork.”
Surfing is one of the most subjective sports, as we know. But, I really feel that the criteria gives us a really good framework for the judges to score longboard surfing. Now, there are and have been two camps of longboard surfing. There’s been a high performance or modern one – whichever way you want to describe it. And then there’s the other camp, I guess you’d call it – what people would describe as traditional surfing. Now, the term “traditional” can, of course, be subjective. But, by and large, people understand what is meant by that and that is: a ’60s-style influence, which has a real emphasis on clean, stylistic surfing with the real hallmark being critical noserides.
My understanding of the criteria, which I didn’t write, I have inherited it, is the criteria is really going to reward folks that are surfing in the traditional longboard manner, which as I said is very ’60s influenced.
Taiwan has played host to the Longboard Tour’s annual contest in past years. This year it’ll be the fourth stop on a four-stop world tour. Photo: WSL/Bennett
New Faces
There’s a crew of fresh faces that are going to be entering the events. Some of them are local surfers that for the last five or seven years have been standouts in other events that have had a traditional focus. Harrison Roach is registered. Justin Quintal is registered and has won numerous Duct Tape events. Another Duct Tape winner, Troy Mothershead, is going to be there. And, of course, you’re going to have the current world champion Steve Sawyer from South Africa and you’ll have former world champions Taylor Jensen and Phil Rajzman. And that’s just the men’s side. On the women’s side we’ll, of course, have Soleil Errico, who’s the current world champ. We also have two-time world champion Kelia Moniz, which we’re excited about. We’ll also have Honolua Blomfield, the previous year’s world champion. And we’ll have some traditional folks that have been in the Duct Tapes like Karina Rozunko and a number of others.
Trajectory of the Longboard Tour
This is just year one. If you look back to the Big Wave Tour, I think we can expect a similar trajectory. The Big Wave Tour did not look how it does today. It was very basic. And after a couple events where people could really understand the opportunity and what the promise of things to come was, then you get that momentum and groundswell of enthusiasm from not just the community but you get brands that are like, “You know what, we want to invest in this because if we invest in it that’s more support for the surfers as well as improving the viewing experience.”
So, now when you look at the BWT, the production they put on with the broadcast, it’s at the same level as the Championship Tour. That’s where we want to go with longboard.
