England. A Promised Land?
By Dan Dobbin.
Well you never stop learning in this life do ya’.
In our early days of Infoamed we threw out the allegation that Michael ” Eppo” Eppelston might not have been the first guy to invent the A.R.S. and no one seemed to care.
https://infoamed.com/2020/05/09/revisionist-history-the-air-roll-spin/
Then we asked whether our lord and saviour Mr Tom Morey may have been influenced by the work of others before him when he first birthed the boogie and only a few people seemed to care.
However after suggesting that some riders utalizing “The Wave” surf tub in Bristol might not be all that jazzed about having to wear Rip Curl branded rashies when surfing the pool, it seemed lots of people cared.
https://infoamed.com/2020/10/20/spat-u-k-bodyboarders-vs-rip-curl/
Well lots of U.K. based people who love the sense of community and fun that the wavepool offers them anyway.
Now, hot on the heels of Rashiegate comes another scandal out of old blighty : Sponogate.
It seems that when my great, great, great, great, great, grandfather* got himself knicked for smuggling sugar across the Thames and dodged the hangmans noose for transportation to the land of Oz all those years ago, he did me a great disservice.
Far from being a cold, forgotten and largely irrelevant surfless hell hole at the top of the world, it seems the United Kingdom is actually a bodyboarding paradise.
Free from the icky restraints of the surfwear politics the rest of the bodyboarding world sometimes whringes it’s hands over, fun waves on demand in a pool, ensconced in the bosom of a like minded, close knit and supportive community, a place where everything really may be awesome.
And at a time when up and coming rippers in Australia are struggling to secure any meaningful sort of backing or sponsorship to follow their dreams of potentially travelling the world for months on end to lose money chasing a world title, in the mother country, it seems they have the opposite problem.
Too much sponorship.
U.K. based Insta page @bodyboarding. Cornwall recently dropped a poll asking their almost 10,000 followers if mayhaps sponorship backing was a little to easy to come by in Queen Lizzies realm.
The results?
For those of you like me who struggle with basic arithmetic, the smallest fraction you can possibly break that down to is 8 out of 10 respondents think that too many kooks are sponsored in the U.K.
So fucking thanks very much great, great, great, great, great Grandpappy John. If you hadn’t resorted to illegal activities to survive in the crushing poverty of 19th century industrial London, I’d be rolling in sponsor product and cash, surfing a fun wave pool with all my mates cheering me on instead of shitting myself a shark is going to eat my legs or one of my children every time I have to surf uncrowded slabbing reefs breaks in boardshorts here in Northern New South Wales.
* I just guesstimated how many “greats” back he was.
