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Tuesday 27th October 2009
For years now I have been carefully watching the development of modern Longboard surfing. At this point in time longboard and shortboard surfing on a profession level are very similar. In both disciplines the winner is determined by how critical a turn can be made as close to the breaking wave as possible, tube riding is a shared element to both, nose riding helps differentiate between the two. My greatest fear was that longboard surfing would be denegrated to a B grade shortboard competition, For that reason I believe that anything that widens the gap between short and longboarding is a good thing.
In yesterdays first round of the Oxbow World Longboard Tour here in Pasta Point in the Maldives we saw the South African champion Matthew Moir pull off a manouevre that was not in the rule book and censequentley was not given credit by the judging panel.The move was a 360 on the open face of the wave. After an good nose ride Matthew let the tail break free and spin around before placing it neatly back in the water and continuing with the wave. This is a difficult manouevre that many of his fellow competitiors could not execute.To my mind this is a valid manouevre that further establishes the difference between short and Longboard surfing. i am optimistic that with the new panel of younger judges the difference between the two disciplines can continue to be appreciated by judges, competitors and the surfing public in general.
By Nat Young
