IOC formally includes surfing in the 2020 games. Are you thrilled?
This’ll give you a shiver, either good or bad. Today, as expected by everyone, the IOC formally included surfing in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
“This is a huge moment for professional surfing and further highlights surfing’s rise as a global participatory and spectator sport,” said the WSL’s CEO Paul Speaker.
In the sort of oddly stilted quote you get when quotes go through the PR wash, world number two John John Florence said: “For the sport, being accepted onto the Olympic stage is a great step forward. Surfing continues to grow and seeing it reach the Olympic level is really exciting. I’m looking forward to the opportunity of representing our country if I’m fortunate enough to make the U.S. team.”
On the other side of the ledger, we find Owen Wright.
“Fuck the Olympics,” Owen told Surfer magazine (pre-brain trauma), later expanding on the theme to a reporter from the news agency Reuters: “I think surfing in itself is more of an art form and an expression so I think the Olympic banner doesn’t really suit the sport of surfing. It suits a lot of other sports but I think surfing is more like judging an art work. It’s kind of hard to put it under that one banner. If you had one event and named the Olympic champion? I think in the world surf league we have a bunch of different canvasses, they’re all totally different waves, and by the end of it you get the winner. I think it has to be like that, to have a bunch of different inclusions to get the one champion.”
And you?
Will you cry with the winners and losers on the podium and cast darting eyes at the rippling bodies flexing or will you just… cry?
