Author Topic: Battle for control of the sport of SUP  (Read 6662 times)

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Re: Battle for control of the sport of SUP
« Reply #30 on: August 07, 2018, 11:39:42 PM »


Our priority has always been the athletes, and this remains the case. The ICF is also still willing to seek a compromise with ISA.

“One option the ICF remains happy to consider is to grant ISA control over all ocean SUP, while the ICF would govern inland flatwater SUP,” ICF President Jose Perurena said.




The irony of this compromise offer is that the proposed Portuguese event run by a canoe association promised far better ocean conditions than a number of the SUP world titles run by a surfing association. Of course, that's a given when the surf association marginalises SUP events to the extent that a surf race is run on an in-land lake.

The other irony is that so many SUP people are so desperate to be associated with surfing and surfers, who regard SUP like red-headed step children. On the other hand, SUP people don't want to be associated with canoeing, yet canoeing people are welcoming SUP with open arms.

It all reminds me of the Groucho Marx line about not wanting to belong to a club that would have me as a member.
I don’t think the canoe community are welcoming us with open arms. They just see us as a potential recruitment source, and they need us because they’ve turned their own sport into something so regulated and uninteresting that few want to do it, and hardly anyone competes at it (relatively speaking).

Both surfers and canoeists have equal contempt for SUP, I suspect. Canoeists see us as “paddle amateurs”, and surfers see us as a terminally uncool bunch of old men and their kids wobbling around on tankers. Of course, there’s a grain of truth in both those characterisations! But we are having too much fun to care :)

ukgm

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Re: Battle for control of the sport of SUP
« Reply #31 on: August 08, 2018, 01:08:46 AM »
I don’t think the canoe community are welcoming us with open arms. They just see us as a potential recruitment source, and they need us because they’ve turned their own sport into something so regulated and uninteresting that few want to do it, and hardly anyone competes at it (relatively speaking).


I agree with this. At worst, it's a huge injection of membership fees and income streams through coaching, qualification, etc. At best you get raised PR and external funding through Olympic inclusion.

I honestly don't believe its the regulation that killed canoeing. Its the lack of the technological insight imparted with any wisdom. C1's became so narrow, unuseable and unsociable that it became obscure and unless you started in a K1 when you're were a 2 year old, you had no easy way to become competitive later with the emphasis on low drag and tippy hulls. They needed more insightful regulation, not less. However, I feel the issue that they have with regulation is that the events themselves became too prescribed and lack personality (by regulating distance and formats) which made sense at the elite end but left its wider weekend warrior base disinterested.

 


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