PWA IWT Unified Wave Tour, the bride was too beautiful

09/06/2023

The windsurfing world is abuzz after the latest round of the Fiji Surf Pro, part of the brand new PWA IWT Unified Wave Tour. The competition provided some spectacular footage, with Sarah Hauser and Baptiste Cloarec winning by a landslide. But it also revealed a crucial debate about the delicate balance between spectator sport and sporting fairness, and therefore the future of the sport.

For decades, the PWA World Tour has been the benchmark for windsurfing competitions, with strict sporting criteria and a performance-oriented approach. Admittedly, the PWA Tour has also struggled for many years to innovate the genre and vary the destinations, which inevitably leads to a certain monotony. Similarly, the PWA World Tour's communications work revolves around daily press releases that provide a comprehensive summary of the day's racing. From the outset, and even more so from 2021, the IWT Wave Tour has opted for a different approach, prioritising social networks for its communication. Fascinating action videos, high quality clips and instant publications have rapidly gained popularity, creating a more immediate impact and attracting a wider audience... And the Fiji Surf Pro revealed a real divide between these 2 approaches, which we believe threatens the sporting fairness of the new PWA IWT Unified Wave Tour circuit.
Organising a windsurfing competition on the Cloudbreak wave in Fiji is nothing short of a miracle and we can only congratulate Simeon Glasson and Russ Faurot, the 2 bosses of the IWT Wave Tour, for their commitment to this event. And with good reason, Cloudbreak is located off the island of Tavarua. This same island and its surroundings are managed by a private hotel complex that controls access to the wave. Historically, access to Cloudbreak has been reserved for hotel guests, who must stay on the island to have the right to ride the wave. Access to the wave is further regulated by the fact that any application to organise a competition must be approved by the Fiji Ministry of Tourism. As prices at Namotu Island Surf Resort Fiji are particularly high, the Fiji Surf Pro organisers have opted for other, more affordable accommodation 45 minutes by boat from Cloudbreak. As for the IWT Wave Tour, the media team is made up of some big names, with Jace Panebianco, Paul van Bellen and Mattéo Nativelle in charge of video, and Sofie Louca and Paul Karaolides of Fish Bowl Diaries for photos. The event's media plan was also perfectly organised with a new television producer, Brian Welsh. Experienced in the production of television programmes for the NFL in the United States, his stated aim is to bring the event up to world class level in order to present windsurfing in a better light to an international audience. The ultimate goal is to create a serious commercial media product to sell the rights to, with the logic of additional income that will benefit everyone, including the riders, in the future. Although the intentions are good (even very good!), the organisation of the IWT Wave Tour seems to be quickly coming up against 2 major stumbling blocks:
1/ A windsurfing competition remains dependent on the vagaries of the weather.
2/ The cost of the event is enormous, even before it has started...

At 8pm on the evening of 31 May, the day before the first day of racing, the competitors who had paid $1,200 to register for a complete package (including the "privatisation" of Cloud Break from 12pm to 5pm for 5 days, several boats for transport to the spot, the presence of the main boat mothership with toilets, fresh water, etc., the presence of jet-skis for security, access to photos and videos taken by the media team, etc.) learned that in the end there would only be one elimination round over 3 possible days of competition. However, the PWA World Tour race rules allow for the possibility of a dingle, a combination of single and double elimination with a second repechage round for those eliminated in the first round. This rarely used elimination table has the advantage of not being as long as a double elimination and offering a second chance. However, this will not be the case. The reason for this is that the overall cost of the event was beginning to explode and the financial support from the Fijian authorities, which had been announced a few months earlier, did not materialise in the end. Originally scheduled for 1-11 June, with 5 possible days of competition and the classic race formats in force, the event has now been reduced to 3 effective days at Cloudbreak, with only one elimination and time running out... For technical and time (and certainly financial) reasons, the announced live streaming will only be available for the final stages of the competition, the semi-finals and finals (men and women). Everyone's taking the pill and getting on with it...
This was followed by the competition, its flood of images on social media and an event that went pretty well overall, with non-professional judges, including Björn Dunkerbeck, and Angela Cochran as head judge, doing the job. As great as the show was, as some may have forgotten, the event still counted towards the World Wave Championship title at the end of the year, and this simple 'dry' elimination claimed its first victim, and not least, on day one with the elimination of Marcilio Browne. The footage of his fall was as spectacular as you could wish for and generated a huge number of likes and shares on Facebook and Instagram. But from a sporting point of view, the reigning world champion has just lost big and won't get a second chance.
From the start of the competition for Baptiste Cloarec, to the final day for Sarah Hauser, the two future winners quickly took the limelight with a deserved victory and a demonstration of effective waveriding. For a while, they made us forget the gentle amateurism that is so typical of these events organised by the IWT Wave Tour (and which generally works quite well!), at least until the men's final...

With the final four competitors (out of a total of 30) already 10 minutes into the race, Antoine Martin made a surreal appearance on the water and caught his 1st wave. Eliminated in the semi-finals, the French waverider returned after lodging a protest and was allowed back into the race (see our summary of the day's events on 4 June). At the heart of the protest were some of his semi-final opponents who had been pulled up on jet skis much higher than expected on the spot, despite a 'gentleman's agreement' between the competitors the day before... Under normal circumstances at a PWA World Tour event, the semi-final would have been re-run, but time was running out, and the competition had to be completed urgently, the sun was setting and this third day was already the last. Antoine Martin had been tipped by the judges for 2nd place in the final (according to our information), but when he came out of the water he learned that his performance had not been taken into account and that he would remain in 5th place overall.
And so the Fiji Surf Pro comes to an end... An 'oversold' competition, no doubt for the competitors and virtual spectators alike, the Fiji Surf Pro leaves us with a very mixed feeling, that of having witnessed an event that was simply sublime from a visual point of view, but somewhat biased in sporting terms.
Announced in January, the PWA IWT Unified Wave Tour was the best news for windsurfing in recent years... Less than 6 months later, the bride seemed too beautiful with 2 circuits that clearly do not have the same approach, the same objectives and, above all, the same standards. And even if image is everything these days, thanks to the Internet and especially to social networks, a minimum of sporting fairness must remain for what is still the Holy Grail for many professional windsurfers, a title of PWA Wave World Champion...
The emblematic and respected head judge of the PWA World Tour for at least 2 decades, the Englishman Duncan Coombs, was to be the guarantor of sporting fairness and (above all!) unity on this new PWA IWT Unified Wave Tour this year. His presence was planned and announced in Japan (he was there!), in Fiji and for the forthcoming final in Maui. But for financial reasons, the organisers of the Fiji Surf Pro decided to do without him...