Injection of government millions guarantees
Australia surf gold in Tokyo!
Whatever you think of bureaucracies like Surfing
Australia (and I’m looking square at you Maurice Cole),
you gotta hand it to ’em: they sure do know how to squeeze shekels
out of every tier of government.
Last week, Surfing Australia unveiled the seven-million dollar
renovation of its pre-existing facility at Casuarina, half-an-hour
or so from Byron Bay. The state government gifted three mill, the
federal government two-and-a-half mill and Surfing Australia
covered the final five hundred gees.
The joint has more foam pits, trampolines, climbing walls, skate
ramps and so on than before, as well as underground parking, a
boardroom, 100-seat auditorium etc.
As reported by tabloid The Sunday Telegraph,
And here it is: Australian surfing’s first-ever factory for
Olympic gold medals.
The 4000 square metre, state-of-the-art centre for high
performance will be used to coach Australia’s current world
champions including Stephanie Gilmore and Tyler Wright.
Every day the new home of surfing excellence will be used to
motivate the next wave of rookies towards the sport’s Olympic debut
at the 2020 Tokyo games.
“We’re one step ahead of the rest of the surfing world,
because I don’t know of any other surfing nation with a facility
like this,’’ Mark Occhilupo, the 1999 world champion,
said.
“If they are, they’re doing it in secret.’’
Australia’s past and present world champions including Joel
Parkinson, Pam Burridge, Tom Carroll, Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew,
Wendy Botha, Phyllis O’Donnell, Pauline Menczer, Beachley and
Occhilupo gathered on Friday.
“This is incredible – the timing of this centre is perfect,
with the coaches we have at Surfing Australia, I can’t see why we
won’t win an Olympic gold medal,’’ Parkinson said. “To walk in
this building and see an Australian Olympic gold medal would be an
amazing feat.’’
And yet, despite the rivers of gold, there is sugar in the
wound.
As the shaper Maurice Cole pointed out in one of his two opinion
pieces on the subject (Read: “Bureaucracy killing Australian
surfing!” and “Why (the fuck) is Australia’s Olympic squad
training at Surf Ranch?”)
It’s a system that’s broken.
It’s not producing anything except salaries for
the people at the top. They’re more interested in having shitty
contests every weekend in every part of Australia.
But when do kids learn to surf? To really
surf?
Meanwhile, the French kids, the Hawaiian kids,
they’re out there charging. Killian Guerin just surfed Waimea.
He’s fourteen. These kids can all surf top-to-bottom barrels no
matter where. By the time they get to the WQS they’re ready to
graduate to the WCT.
Surfing Australia, I feel, is a
mediocre bureaucracy that produces mediocrity. We have some of the
best free surfers in the world, Ando, Creed, Noa and we have that
in bucketloads, but for the competitive kid, all they get prepared
for is years and years on the QS.
Right now is the lowest
Australian competitive surfing has ever been and the Olympics are
coming up. God knows how we’ll go. Normally, I’d say Australia is
odds-on for a medal but I fucking doubt it. We don’t have the depth
of surfers. But we have all the infrastructure, all the academies,
the six-million-dollar high-performance centre, all the
bureaucracies.
Why has Brazil produced all
these amazing, hungry surfers? Not because they have more talent.
They do a few local contests, do the ISA, world pro juniors then
they’re straight onto the WQS. We dick around for another two
years, hold onto ‘em until they’re twenty. Meanwhile, teenage
Brazilians are spending their winters in Hawaii.
Me?
I don’t think you can buy enough curved-screen televisions and
inflatable bags and climbing walls. I mean, look at the best
surfers in the world: Dane Reynolds, John John Florence, Filipe
Toledo. They’re all products of coaching, yes?
Yes?
