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As we are days away from the start of Kelly Slater’s WSL Wave Pool event in Lemoore, California, let’s take it back to 1985 when the first competitive wave pool event went down in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Pro Surfing was in its infancy with ASP chief Ian Cairns on a mission to share our sport with the masses. Below is Tracks writer Graham Cassidy’s first-hand account of the event, who was there to report on the wave-pool experiment that went down in the Middle Atlantic state. This archive featured in Tracks Magazine Issue no. 179(August, 1985).
FUN & GAMES AT THE WAVE-POOL
Written by Graham Cassidy
The ocean goes flat occasionally, but at least there’s plenty of it to choose from. Contest competitors can travel far and wide to get practice sessions in if the waves at the tournament site are below par. Likewise, they can practice all day long. So if the surf is minute and blown out in the morning, it might pick up by the afternoon. With wave pool surfing, no such luxuries exist. You’re stuck with one solitary pool, and thereby hangs a problem.
The ASP tour heavyweights and hopefuls who ventured to Allentown, Pennsylvania, for the inaugural Inland World Championship didn’t have to worry about the wind blowing onshore, or about whether they had long enough boards to handle any rise in swell.
But trying to get in tune for a heat was a task fraught with difficulty, not to mention anxiety. The Allentown wave pool, or at least the big dollar hydraulics used to generate the “swells”, was a very sensitive beast, requiring constant maintenance shutdowns.
This didn’t leave a whole lot of time before, during and after the contest schedule for surfers to come to grips with the man-made environment. The only “good” thing was that everyone, from No 1 seed Tom Carroll down, was equally disadvantaged.
The same goes for the waves themselves, which gushed out through plastic netting from the pits of a cement-encased machine room. They sounded like ocean waves, and at times broke, crested and coiled like ocean waves. But the power in them was papier- mache. Not even the worst shorebreak could be weaker.
How the surfers did what they did during this $30,000 Grand Prix, with the results counting towards the 1985-86 world crown, still addles my brain.
Eventual winner Tom Carroll, more than anyone else, stamped his class on this event, designed to promote the Wildwater Park in which the $1.8 million wave pool is located.
ASP chief lan Cairns was lured to Allentown by promises of four to five foot waves. The pool itself was said to be two- thirds the size of a football field. Unfortunately, the builders of the pool ran into granite and this forced the complex to be shorter than originally anticipated.
Instead of the waves running for up to 50 metres as promised, they ran for little more than 25 metres, going from a peak about hip- high to a dead flat lapping on the cement “beach”. And the more compact dimensions meant the draught between where the waves were summoned up by piston-driven flaps and the lineup was reduced from a hoped for 20 feet to four feet.
Ocean waves pick up force as they travel mile after mile. In the wave pool the waves had no chance to pick up any thrust beyond that, provided by the 100hp pistons. Hence they carried little oomph, and what they did carry petered out very fast. Most rides were reduced to one or two big manoeuvres, with three manoeuvres a rare bird indeed.
The buoyancy of the fresh water was enhanced by chlorine, but it didn’t really combat that “sinking feeling” felt by most competitors, even those using new light- weight hydrofoam boards. Just on that score, it was significant in many eyes that three of the four semi- finalists, Carroll, Charlie Kuhn and Derek Ho, used conventional sticks. Only Californian newcomer Paul Barr (brother of David) rode an ultralite board.
Tom Carroll was as nervous as anyone about the wave pool ahead of the event. He felt from the outset that it should have been an exhibition tournament, but with greater voices agreeing to a full-blown event, he reluctantly went along for the ride.
Tom, despite his grand victory, felt pretty much the same way after it was all over, saying that he would be banning himself from similar contests in the future unless it could be shown the length and strength of wave pool waves are vastly improved.
With so much ocean on the planet, it can be reasonably asked why the ASP tour needs wave pool contests. The answer is just as reasonable. Ian Cairns has long believed that pro surfing’s future as a bigtime sport hinges on turning on middle America.
Tens of millions of landlocked Americans can’t identify with the ocean, but might just find empathy with man-made waves in their own backyards. Most of them are sport nuts, and given time might just get a feel for the brilliance and skill of pro surfers. If they ever do, goes the theory. there will be a new demand created, forcing the big US TV networks to pursue surfing competition to feed that demand.
Enough of theory, back to brass tacks. Tom Carroll has placed his world title in mortal jeopardy by boycotting the South African events. So it was crucial that he do well in Allentown to help combat the points dis- advantage of missing those three tournaments in Capetown and Durban.
He arrived in the city, about 90 minutes from downtown Philadelphia, four days before the start of the trials heats. It was a good move because he was able to gain invaluable time in the pool learning to measure its many cons and less pros.
Allentown was by all accounts a depressed (Robert Beck) metropolis plagued by industrial landscapes and foul air. Instead it turned out to be a very leafy, very scenic outpost that boasted the most charming colonial architecture. The Dorney amusement park, about two miles from the city centre, is 100 years old and boasts a classic rollercoaster along with scores of more modern fun rides.The adjoining Wildwater Kingdom has 10 water oriented facilities, from giant slides to slippery dips to the wave pool, which is aimed at giving the locals a taste of moving water. The owners are hellbent on turning the complex into a health retreat, with aerobic centres and health food restaurants.
The ASP tour brigade took several days to acclimatise to the bizarre scenario they found themselves immersed in. Most were prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt.
But with 75 surfers all wanting time to practise it soon became evident that lan Cairns had an administrative nightmare on his hands, one that was compounded by sensitive machinery and by the park owner’s desire to provide time in the pool for the public.
Competitors were thus each forced to cop one 20 minute workout session a day, hardly the sort of intense immersion required to gear up for a major contest.
For once, the trialists had the edge over the seeds because they got more surfing time through their heats.
It was soon evident that smaller, lightweight surfers had the edge. Their nimbleness meant they could more easily summon an extra wiggle here or cheater five there.
Those “extras” were often what the judges needed to adjudicate one ride from another. Bigger competitors like Gary Elkerton, Willy Morris, Bud Llamas and Davey Miller gave it all they had, but too many times became bogged down. Large-framed seeds such as Shaun Tomson, Wes Laine and Cheyne Horan also paid the price of encountering slim statured rookies.
Manly’s Kingsley Looker was perfectly proportioned, but blew his chance by mixing. up his heat times. Instead of taking on Avoca’s evergreen John Harris in a round one heat, he was busily psyching himself up at the cinema watching the new Sylvester Stallone movie Rambo, First Blood II.
Damien Hardman was equally well suited to the conditions, but after brilliantly dispensing of Mike Lambresi in round two, came up against the surprise packet of the contest, 20-year-old Californian Paul Barr. Barr had the knack of pulling a roundhouse. cutback that lifted him across a weak foam section to set up several wiggle turns on the inside. He usually travelled at least five yards further than his opponents, a neat turn of performance that was also exploited by Florida’s Charlie Kuhn in his barnstorming push into the semifinals. Barr had his rides so well patterned that he was able to stop the normally energetic Tom Curren in his tracks at the quarterfinals.
Hawaii’s Derek Ho used his wave-slide technique to total advantage, snapping off two vertical re-entries in the space of five yards on every ride. It worked wonderfully for him throughout the event as he dusted Denton Miyamura, Scottt McCranels and Charlie Kuhn in succession.
But in the final against Carroll the technique didn’t give off the same impact. Not because it wasn’t dynamic but because seen. beside the awesome thrust of the Australian’s snapbacks and full roundhouse blasts, the Ho show looked decidedly lacklustre. Carroll, after surviving a close call in his round three bout with Mike Burness and a touch and go quarterfinal against Glen Winton, treated the powderpuff waves with absolute disdain. His bountiful thighs worked overtime to pump his board into the most radical positions, as if he was at Newport Peak rather than in some glorified Olympic pool. From the side of the pool, decked with banana chairs, it looked like the epitome of surfing power.
Spectators no more than six feet away were privy to every anatomical movement, every facial expression. The surfing action was three-dimensional rather than the two- dimensional scene from a normal beach. It was an alien environment for sea-going creatures, but being so near the movement and being able to study at close range the body English of the world’s best surfers made the Allentown circus a unique experience.
The potential, if not from a recreational surfing perspective, is certainly vast at the competitive level. But maybe the pool owners will have to put up more than the minimum $25,000 purse to keep attracting heavies.
As Tom Carroll observed: “I don’t get any satisfaction from riding on my hands and knees down the wall of a pool. I don’t think that does anything for the dignity of the sport.”
RESULTS
1 Tom Carroll
2 Derek Ho
3 Charlie Kuhn Paul Barr
5 Glen Winton Mark Occhilupo Tom Curren Scott McCranels
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