The imminent arrival of the ASP Dream Tour in Taranaki risks turning into a nightmare for contest organisers and the New Zealand surfing community at large.
Surfers from the recently reformed Coastal Boardriders Club have given notice of a rival event and there have been whispered threats from others to paddle out and disrupt the ASP contest should it head for the region’s prime breaks.
Featuring the top echelon of women surfers from around the world, the decision for the Dream Tour to dip its toes in the waters of Aotearoa was initially hailed as a coup for event organisers Surfing Taranaki.
It was also seen as recognition for local surfing’s poster-girl Paige Hareb who broke into the Tour last year and has been performing creditably ever since.
Paige Hareb in action
But it didn’t take long for surfing’s perennial problem– or blessing depending on your viewpoint – of “localism” to raise its somewhat contradictory head.
Although pencilled in for town breaks at Fitzroy and Back Beaches in the city of New Plymouth, some surfers have baulked at the potential international exposure of Taranaki’s famed coastal breaks along Surf Highway 45 such as Stent Rd and Graveyards. And there is some justification for this, with nearby Arawhata Rd and Kumara Patch earmarked as back-up venues should the surf in town not be up to scratch.
But while arguments against the tour’s visit have ranged from a protest against a perceived lack of consultation to a dig at commercialised surfing to a desire to protect fragile environments, the overall impression– in the mainstream media – has been of a group of surfers who wish to retain the coast’s breaks for their own use.
This could simply be due to poor public relations on their behalf because there is no doubt consultation should’ve occurred – some argue it did – and there are legitimate arguments against commercialisation – but, hey, name one area of our lives that has not been commercialised – and the environment at popular surf breaks certainly struggles during peak use.
The chatter on the NZ Surfer Magazine blog forum has been almost universally against the Dream Tour and some obviously passionate surfers raise many valid points about the ASP coming to town and its associated spinoffs.
But what is somewhat astounding is that many of the same surfers who loudly protest the arrival of the tour on their patch will in the next breath proudly tell tales of their “epic” surf trips to Australia, Indo, Fiji, Sri Lanka, Hawaii or some other far-flung destination.
Can they not see the rather obvious contradiction here?
If it is okay for them to visit someone else’s prime breaks then surely they can’t make too much noise about others — freedom and competition surfers — doing the same here.
As mentioned earlier there are concerns about the exposure of the “famed’’ coastal breaks.
And they are certainly famous, a simple Google search turns up just over 1 million results for “Stent Rd + surfing” and while it’s obvious not all of these will be the Taranaki break, you’d have to turn several pages before you’d find a single page that is not.
It’s already out there, photographs, video and detailed descriptions of how to get there and how the break works.
It is also somewhat ironic that the protests about this event have added reams to the media coverage – including this post.
So while there is certainly more to this issue than first meets the eye, perhaps a better strategy would be to simply live and let surf …
Taranaki Chronicles 