The Competitive Edge

I was once a competitor. I wore day-glo rashguards every weekend, ate 59 cent bean and cheese burritos at Taco Bell Reef (RIP), got corndogged, buried my wetsuit in the sand thinking it would dry faster (it didn’t, it simply made it sandy) and played to the criteria while attempting to make a name for myself in 15 minute flurries from age 12-18. My competitive career was a complete failure. I rarely, if ever surfed in a heat how I actually surfed. And I blamed the format.

The scene for the first heat I ever surfed was this: An NSSA on Southside of the HB pier: Six 12-year-old kids, 15 minutes, top 3 waves scored, beach start (you can’t paddle out until the previous heat is over i.e. if it’s big, you’re fucked). I wore the blue jersey. Waves were solid. The horn blew and chaos ensued.

To even catch three waves in 15 minutes was priority number one. Making it all the way out the back 3 times, a feat reserved for only the best. The format was designed to create madness — a flurry of grommet activity in the sea, the ocean turning to a cauldron of frothing scrawny kids too small for football or baseball scratching toward the horizon through whitewater rapids, against all odds. We’d throw ourselves at every wave that moved for 15 minutes, our arms gone, our legs jelly from nerves. Then we’d come in and see if we miraculously beat at least 3 people to move on to the next round. I was famous for getting 4th. First round clown.

So much has changed for our sport since then. Amateur contests have priority. Even some man-on-man scenarios. Live scoring. Professionally we’ve come a long way too. We got through the ASP 80s and 90s, enjoyed the and the A.I. / Kelly era, which gave way to the Joel, Mick and Taj era, introduced the WSL Dream Tour and professionalism, which gave way to another Kelly era. Then we saw the dwindling of the Dream Tour, and the corporate takeover era began. Probably saw another Kelly era in there. The Brazilian Storm Era. And now some sort of resurgence of the Dream Tour maybe? Kinda? Maybe Abu Dhabi is your dream?

All in all, competitive surfing has evolved and gotten better. But there hasn’t been a serious disruption at the top for some time. Judging by the lack of info/context on this year’s qualifiers and the constant wonder about whether Carissa, Steph, John John, Filipe, and Medina will even participate, it seems like something would have to give. And this week, finally, something did.

I have had my ear to the ground for any momentum around any sort of “rebel tour” for decades. I always wanted in. My competitively crushed adolescent heart needed redemption. I wanted to be a part of something that allowed surfing and surfers to be featured in a way that felt like surfing did when you were out there trying to both impress and destroy your friends. High-end rivalry coupled with high-end fun at a wave that celebrated the ridiculous notion that our playing field is as wild as Mother Nature. And something can drown or eat you at any moment.

Professional snowboarder Travis Rice introduced this to Snowboarding 5 years ago with Natural Selection: an event that pitted the best against each other, but also pitted them against the mountain itself. I watched in awe from afar. Very far, I’m not very good at mountains. Hoping that one day surfing would get a similar treatment.

Well, the wait is finally over. This week it was announced that the Natural Selection Tour itself would be coming to surfing, very soon. And guess who had their ear so close to the ground that they managed to get involved! Me! The grom in the blue jersey who couldn’t make a heat and became obsessed with surf competition disruption.

Last week we attended the wake of Surfing Magazine together. Saying goodbye while hopefully kickstarting a new wave for surf culture. This week we were gifted the opportunity to be showcased in a new way that will provide a platform for world’s best surfers who maybe found the formats of old too restrictive. Or the general idea too…corporate. Or conservative. Or lame. Natural Selection is for them.

Tonight I am celebrating. Surf culture was disrupted this week and now it’s steaming with gas and magma, another sign that our renaissance is about to erupt.—Travis Ferré

[Above art: John Baldessari, The Overlap Series: Double Motorcyclists and Landscape (Icelandic), 2003]