There are very, very few people who look comfortable on a SUP. These people are generally very good surfers in the first place; people who can surf well in serious waves. These people also generally start off with a pleasant looking surfing style, and adopt this style somehow to their approach to SUP riding. But these people, as mentioned, are very few and far between. After Laird, there are probably less than a handful worldwide.
In general SUP riders are the most unpleasant and unattractive surfers to ever get out amongst the waves. They all look awkward and stilted. They clumsily wobble from side to side, cannot steer their craft to catch an approaching wave, and consistently fall off, get on their knees and paddle away from danger. They cannot steer their craft when they eventually catch a wave, and wobble and totter like old ladies on ski slopes. It is absolute agony to watch, and the humour of watching them wipeout doesn’t exist because the reality of the matter is that if a SUP runs free from a rider and hits an innocent swimmer or surfer on the head we will, in all likelihood, have a death or a case of brain damage on our hands. It is the single biggest blight on the dirty, stinky underbelly that is the modern surfing lifestyle.
Yet still people with little or no waterman skills continue to buy these unguided missiles and sweep out amongst the genuine surfers, causing fear and vitriol wherever they go. Much like the paddle ski scourge that nearly took over the world a decade or two ago, the SUP disease whilst showing no sign of abating just yet, will eventually fade away into the trashcans of the world as these dim-witted people wake up and realise that they are really wasting their time and coming across like unintelligent jocks, gormless halfwits, as well as rude pricks for taking their craft to the water.
There is probably a place for SUP’s in the world. They have a history in Waikiki, where 3-inch waves roll slowly forward for hundreds of metres. So Waikiki is probably an acceptable place for a person to trundle along on their plane-wing and oar combination. Maybe dams and lakes could be utilised by the SUP brigade. Rivers. Any large body of water that doesn’t have waves breaking in it or people using it could be utilised by the feckless SUP brethren.
Still, the absolute chagrin-inducing (chagrin definition: strong feelings of annoyance or displeasure, mixed with embarrassment) nadir of this pursuit must be the fact that deluded sea-sweepers the world over are now taking their hideous sport into the realms of competition. Why any surfer (and I find I have to use the term ‘surfer’ loosely) would deem it fun or necessary to have to compete against other deluded sweepers is well beyond me. This travesty of a sham of a mockery of a farce has gone as far as a world championship. So (mainly) bald, squatting men can bump up against each other and try and determine who is the best sweeper on the planet. They cannot dare say that anything that they do on a wave is surfing, it is simply manipulating an unwieldy and unresponsive surfing barge with an oar in such a way that it doesn’t nose-dive or crash and kill you or innocent by surfers
I reckon being a SUP world titleholder is akin to winning a title in the Special Olympics. Even if you win you’re still retarded.
