Resurrecting surfing at the coast

A 10-day visit by a South African national team of master surfers to Swakopmund earlier this month has resulted in a ‘revival’ for Namibian surfing.

From November 6 to 15, the SA team spent some time socialising with local surfers, enjoying tourism activities in the area, and showcasing their mettle during two friendly contests.The master’s team consisted of world champion, Marc Wright of Durban, multi-participants in several world championship finals, David and Andre Malherbe of East London, 1992 World Surfing Games runner-up, Carl Roux of Umhlanga, and new caps, Dave Fish and Mike Brent of East London as well as Gary van Wieringen of Warner Beach. They were accompanied by their coach Ant Brodowicz, who was the 1978 world champion who in turn brought Penny and Hannes Stemmet of Somerset West. Namibian surfing champion Torsten Gossow, who helped organise the international exchange between SA and Namibia, told The Namibian Sport that the SA team was supposed to attend an international event in South America recently, which was eventually cancelled. ‘That’s when they decided to come here instead and have a friendly competition with our own breed of surfers,’ he said.On November 7 and 14, ‘tough’ tag-team challenges were held. During a tag-team challenge surf teams are divided into groups. One surfer per team has limited time to swim out and catch and surf a maximum of three waves of which two of his ‘claimed-waves’ count towards the total points for his team. Each team is made up of five surfers and gets a total time of 50 to 60 minutes to complete the round. ‘It’s like a surfing relay,’ Gossow explained. ‘This SA team might be older, but they really kicked spray into our local surfers’ faces. At best, their fitness and skill levels were a tremendous inspiration to us.’The SA team won both events.’Usually this time of the year, our swell is not that good, but the guys were lucky. We had some nice waves during the friendly contests and also throughout the their whole 10 days of stay,’ he said.According to Gossow, a spin-off of the exchange has resulted in the SA masters team offering their assistance to revive the hibernating Namibian Surfing Association (NSA). This assistance will include the co-ordination and hosting of local, national and even international surfing events. Surfing coaches and event judges from Namibia will also be trained.’With this, we will kick-start local surf clubs in Swakopmund and maybe even Lüderitz, so youngsters who may have an interest to start surfing, or amateur surfers wanting to improve themselves and compete, will have the opportunity,’ he said.Gossow said local surfers started experiencing difficulties in attending competitions outside Namibia because international events were split into separate events throughout the year and due to lack of funds, it became difficult for them to attend all the events across the globe.’It becomes expensive when different divisions have to participate at different times and in different countries,’ he said. ‘We just could not keep up financially, and so our guys stayed local and the sport quickly went into hibernation. Now the possibility of hosting events here will encourage us to start with our development again.’Namibia’s first-ever surf team attended the World Surfing Games in Portugal 1998, in Brazil in 2000 and South Africa in 2002 with the help of the Swakopmund surfer family, the Brabys, and the entire surfing community of Namibia. Gossow (29), started surfing at 15 shortly after moving from Windhoek to Swakopmund. A year later he won the junior nationals, and took the open nationals in 2005 and 2006. Gossow said there was a lot of potential for local surfing and Swakopmund and Lüderitz were ideal for the sport’s development. In fact, Namibia apparently has some of the best tubing waves in the world, which recently attracted international attention, The Namibian Sport learned.’We still have some hidden gems that have to be kept secret though,’ Gossow said.’At the moment, because of the lack of exposure, surfing is not doing that well, and we definitely need more youngsters to become interested,’ he said. ‘But that’s going to happen – soon.’He said that when he started surfing, the surfing community was much bigger. ‘There are still young guys here and there that are starting, but mostly one sees the kids on skateboards or rollerblades, and I don’t know why because we’ve got the ocean right here on our doorstep. I think if we can get some more kids to start and enjoy surfing, we can start having local competitions again and even send a team to the next world surfing games again,’ he said. adam@namibian.com.na