I’ve been trying to learn how to surf now for around thirty years. I like to surf. No. Let’s take that a step further. I love to surf. Do I call myself a surfer? No. A surfer is an athlete who has acquired a specific qualifying level of competence and skill at the act of surfing. I am one person who has not achieved that requisite standard... but, despite loving the act of … [Read more...]
RITUAL: BEING CHAIRED UP THE BEACH
Now that the 2022 WSL World Championship season is over it is probably an appropriate time to revisit a story published by Chas Smith in online journal BeachGrit a few years back. One would think that, after his scathing critique of this ludicrous practice, that winners of surfing contests would have put their feet down by now and refused to be made to look like a staggering … [Read more...]
Training mysteries in the times of COVID
Strange and mysterious stuff happens during Covid lockdown. Even stranger stuff happens when attempting to train under Covid lockdown conditions. A good example of the mysterious times we live in happened to me yesterday. I turned up at my local lap pool, in the morning, ready to knock out two kilometres of freestyle. The sign on the door demanded, not surprisingly, that … [Read more...]
Outstanding (but not well-known) sporting achievement
Lifelong surfer and former Manly (Sydney Northern Beaches) resident, Greg Mossop, is possibly the only surfer in the world who has dropped-in on two world champions on the one wave! He freely admits that many surfers can boast that they have dropped in on more than one world champion in their surfing lives, but it is the fact that he managed the feat on the one wave that makes … [Read more...]
Swimmer smashes recent times…
After a week of recording pitifully slow freestyle times over 1500 m, swimmer and sports philosopher, Socrates, knew he had to change something. "I was swimming like a bloody soccer player, all week," lamented the ancient Greek athlete and thinker, "...so I had to come up with a solution!" Miraculously, Socrates shaved five minutes off his recent times while swimming at … [Read more...]