Photo: RDMSTUDIO
Those who want to determine whether surfing should be in the Olympics should look at how freeskiing’s entry has shaped the sport. In my opinion, the Olympics only added another major competition to what had become a podium dominated subculture of the sport. So while the Olympics may have made training a more serious matter, it only affected the athletes that we’re already dedicated to standing on podiums.
Now let’s be clear: I am not a professional skier nor have I flirted with the opportunity. I am just a fan of the sport who has formed these opinions based off of what’s available on television and the internet.
I’m not saying that those who believe surfing should not be in the Olympics are wrong. Instead, I believe that if you look freeskiing, it was already at a place where athletes we’re training year-round to win competitions. So the sport’s entry into the Olympics did not drastically change it for the worse, it just gave those athletes a further opportunity to achieve success. If surfing is likewise at a place where a significant portion of athletes are primarily focused on heats and contests and scores and standings, those athletes deserve the opportunity to take their talents to the sports world’s biggest stage.
Tetsuhiko Endo’s take on the subject brings up valid points that I cannot speak to because I do not fully understand the state of surfing. In regards to his take on snowboarding, I don’t know when snowboarding entered the Olympics. But I do know that the trend that makes snowboarding unappealing in his mind has already happened to skiing — i.e. guys who wear “baggy sloppettes [who] try to squeeze in one more quarter rotation ever year.” You can thank the X Games for that phenomenon in skiing. So if certain athletes already exist in a competition-driven space, why not give them the chance to stand on an Olympic podium?
I think if you really want to determine whether you should do it, the surf community should ask the athletes. These are the people who will be undertaking the greatest changes in their lives. They will be moving to “center of excellences” in their respective countries. Those who do so will immediately became representative of a shift in the sport and subject to discrimination. They’ll be subject to drug testing, not just during the Olympics but during the years in which they train on their respective teams.
I’m guessing that surfing already has a division in the sport. There are the athletes that focus greatly on winning competitions. And there are those that surf for the love of surfing, supported by film segments and other media. The Olympics will surely enhance that division, but staying out of the Olympics will not eliminate it.
Do you really want to rob these guys a chance to win an Olympic gold medal just because it might reinforce an already growing rift in the sport? Just because surfing will be a little less pure by becoming more mainstream?
Vice Sports made a documentary about freeskiing’s entry onto the Olympic stage. It identified a rift in the sport caused by the global games. However, as media outlets tend to do, its piece may have exaggerated tensions. That rift had been brewing for some time before the Olympics, caused in part by the increasing television ratings of the Winter X Games. The Olympics just added wood to the fire.
The skier who won the gold in Slopestyle, Joss Christensen, grew up attending the Winter Sports School in Park City. Much of his youth was dedicated towards practicing the maneuvers that would help win freeskiing events. He was very much on the competition track, and the Olympics just provided him a further level of success and stardom than was available through the X Games. I would imagine there are parallel athletes in surfing, who have spent years training, both in and out of the water, with the goal of winning competitions.
I understand that modern surfing was born out of a rejection of organized sports. High schoolers quit the basketball and baseball teams in order to surf in the afternoons — I get that. But the reality is that surfing has already arrived at a place where competitions are a major part of the sport. The same can be said about freeskiing, which was born out of a rejection of organized racing and mogul teams. The guys who pioneered the freeskiing movement we’re members of those teams and left them in search of more freedom and more progression. Freeskiing in the Olympics meant that X Games athletes were now apart of teams — freeskiing teams. Clearly that marked a return to the same culture that led to the contradictory movement of freeskiing. It makes sense that it is an unattractive notion; it’s irony in its purest form. But the reality is that freeskiing had been moving in that direction, and had arguably completed that transformation, before the Olympics.
If surfing is at the same place where skiing was immediately before its entry into the Olympics, I think the sport is already at a point of no return. If you chose to believe that, then rest assured that the Olympics will only provide the hardest working athletes more gratification and validation for all those man hours.
