Catch a wake up: Surfing needs a swell time

Surfing's elite World Championship Tour kicked off this weekend on the Gold Coast of Australia, and for the first time in a long while there are only two South Africans competing - Bianca Buitendag and Jordy Smith.

Both are No 7 on the respective women's and men's tour.

Beneath them is a gap so huge it is hard to say who will be the next big thing. The future generation of South African surfers is not exactly busting down the door, and for those with an understanding of the history and heritage of South African surfing, this is deeply troubling.

There was a time when, despite apartheid-era sport boycotts and our pariah nation status, surfing thrived in the motherland.

Shaun Tomson was a living legend. Martin Potter, who grew up in Durban but represented Great Britain largely because of apartheid, was a reigning world champion. Local brands were producing world-class surfboards, accessories, boardies and bikinis and the Gunston 500 pulled crowds of 20000.

While those may have been the glory days, it has never been easy for South African surfers to compete at the top of the sport.

"Surfers with World Title aspirations have a difficult route to navigate," said Pat Flanagan, co-founder of the South African Surfing Legends Association.

"The cost of competing on the Qualifying Tour is prohibitive to all but the few who are fortunate enough to be able to lay out the cash. Add this to the fact that so few qualifying series events take place in their home waters and that puts our surfers at a serious disadvantage.

"We have the raw talent, but it needs to be nurtured. Right now we need to focus heavily on coaching juniors. If we can address these challenges we can regain our status as a premier surfing nation, a position that we've held for decades."

Buitendag acknowledges that the support and stability at home and the opportunities created by parents help to determine whether a surfer will develop to their full potential.

"If it wasn't for my parents' belief and investment, taking me to compete internationally at their own expense at least three times a year from age 14, I would not have had the opportunity or diverse experiences to develop," she said.

Local surfing golden boy Jordy Smith doesn't believe that the lack of surfing heroes is due to lack of talent.

"I think it has more to do with discipline. We have some of the most consistently good waves in the world and I feel that a lot of our surfers keep running home when they should be grinding it out in other places," he said.

The situation is not all doom and gloom. South Africa, with far fewer resources and numbers, has remained if not at the top at least near the top of world surfing since before Tomson won the title back in 1976 for a number of reasons.

Firstly, we have an incredible stretch of coastline; almost 3000km from Namibia to Mozambique, perfectly located to catch all the swell generated in the Southern Atlantic and Indian oceans. It produces every kind of wave for South Africans to cut their teeth and hone their skills.

Secondly, surfing culture runs deep in South Africa. From Cape Town through the Eastern Cape to Durban, there's a long list of surfing champions and world tour surfers who are still involved in passing down their skills.

We have an established and globally competitive surf industry providing much-needed sponsorship and making and selling products that get people surfing.

There are also an increasing number of organisations such as South African Surfing Legends supporting the sport's governing body, Surfing South Africa, with training camps and coaching sessions, and using grassroots initiatives to take the sport out of it's narrow white upper-middle-class confines.

"We have some of the best waves in the world and I think that moulds and helps every single one of us," said Smith.

"In the past there were up to five of us on tour in the same year. I believe we can get back to that and even have a few more. We just have to work for it and be prepared to make the sacrifices."