An amateur contest to determine the best surfers in Great Britain had to be postponed during the women’s semi-finals yesterday after a group of free surfers paddled into the line-up, allegedly dropping in on those in rashies and hurling abuse towards them.
The GB Cup, which was being held in solid conditions at Thurso, Scotland’s premier right hand reef break, sees surfers from England, Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands battle against each other for both individual and team honours. The contest featured a number of WSL QS competitors including the likes of Stan Norman, Patrick Langdon-Dark and up and coming superstar Lukas Skinner who has been tipped to be Britain’s next best hope for a future CT surfer.
The event was cut shortly after the conclusion of the women’s second semi-final. GB Surfing released the following statement on their social media channels:
“We understand that there is a police investigation proceeding into an alleged incident of abuse towards competitive surfers by ‘free’ surfers, initially directed towards female competitors in the GB Cup.
“The board of GB Surfing is deeply concerned by the news of the incident, which has brought the even to an abrupt end.
“We recognise that surfers in the final will be disappointed by the premature termination of the competition following an incident but we are grateful to the event delivery team for acting promptly and their cooperaton with the Police in this matter.
“GB Surfing will issue a further statement in due course.”
While there has been no confirmation on the exact details of the incident, a quick glance at the comment section on the post paints a pretty good picture of what went down.
While an incident like this is a rare occurrence. Trying to manage lineups of hungry free surfers has often been a problem for surf contest organisers from every corner of the globe. Without legal jurisdiction organisers cannot stop free surfers from entering the lineup, but you’d hope that people would be respectful enough to allow those competing to do so without being hassled or abused.
In this case, there was only a couple of heats left to run. However, the contest, which relied on the work of volunteers, will now have to resume at a later date. Surfers on social media labelled the incident ‘heartbreaking’ and a ‘sad day’ for British surfing.
