In The Mix Danarchist Dispatch #3

In: In The Mix by doclach 0 Comments Thu 23rd Jun '11

Tags: Danarchist , dispatch 3

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Dispatch:
On why Mike may still be the most important man on the tour.

Mike's getting pretty old. Guess that means I am to. For gentleman of a certain age bracket Mike was the reason you started bodyboarding. He was the shining example you could point to when you where suffering under the weight of moronic taunts from our upright brethren, undeniably impressive, and the benchmark for which to aspire.

When Stewart won the Arica comp in 2009, a mini-furore played out on message boards and websites fuelled by the perception that the lack of hi-fi in his riding was in fact holding back the sport. If Mike could win a comp on the strength of a routine lifted from his pipeline playbook of twenty years previous, then what did that say about the progression of the judging criteria, and the sport in general (Maybe it said "Good surfing is still good surfing", but what do I know).

But this isn't about the Mike of 1991. It's about the Mike of now. Watching the mainstream media coverage of the this years Shark Island challenge its apparent that for the lazy reporter, ignorant of the intricacies of the Bodyboarding microcosm, Mike is the angle, the segue to the story. He's the closest thing we have to brand recognition amongst the trampling herd of the sheeple. While Winnie won, Mike was still the hook.

Any professional sport lives and dies on its ability to attract the sponsorship. The basic equation: Level of financial Support is proportional to the amount of market exposure it can generate.
(Understand now why the Pro surfing tour is holding comps in San Francisco this year and Manly next year? But that for another day....) The ability to generate significant media exposure and interest in a high number of people is a powerful tool to attracting higher levels of financial investment in the tour.

The high performance nature of the riding, and the visually stunning images that come out of the good waves being surfed on the tour serve to make bodyboarding a potentially very marketable product . What the sport really needs to push now is what is referred to in politics as a narrative, an overarching story or theme that people can understand, relate to and follow.
The narrative of bodyboarding today (the professionalism, the waves of consequence, the pushing of performance levels) comes in large part from Mikes involvement and influence . The true benefit at this point in time to Mike being on the tour lies not in his riding performance but rather in his ability to be a symbol, a human embodiment of this narrative.

Every interview he has given, every time his name is mentioned in the mainstream media it's built a recognition, a reference point of what a bodyboarder is. His articulation of what it means to be a bodyboarder provides a framework people to understand the sport as a whole. What better person to have as tour PR man than the guy largely responsible for creating the narrative in the first place?

Post Script: Thought Winnie did really well handling the Mainstream stuff post Island win.

Yours in stargazing.......

The Danarchist

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