Dyer needs with …
Make or break In an infamous interview , the Beatles were once asked if Ringo Starr was the greatest drummer in the world . Lennon jokingly replied that Starr wasn ’ t even the best drummer in the Beatles .
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Dyer needs with …
Bryce Dyer
Make or break In an infamous interview , the Beatles were once asked if Ringo Starr was the greatest drummer in the world . Lennon jokingly replied that Starr wasn ’ t even the best drummer in the Beatles .
For me , that ’ s a decent analogy of my experiences in SUP racing over the last couple of years . I can travel to an event and be reasonably competitive yet still be given an absolute hiding by half a dozen great paddlers less than five minutes from where I live and they don ’ t race much . Along with this , my other half recently asked me whether the SUP racing bubble had burst . I didn ’ t know but my reply was maybe that we had maybe just got it all wrong to start with . For example , British Cycling ’ s membership has increased nearly 10 fold in just under 10 years . That ’ s been cited as mainly being due to its ‘ Olympic effect ’. This effect is where we are influenced to take up a sport due to your countries own success in it ( which for us oddly seems to involve anything that requires sitting down – i . e . rowing , sailing , equestrian and cycling ).
However , when you read into this and see the explosion in their event participation , this growth is not in their races . It ’ s actually in its ‘ sportifs ’. These are events which are timed and have no prizes at all . Put simply , it ’ s providing a ‘ big day out ’ experience and gives weekend warriors the option to covertly race their hearts out or to just tootle around without fear of reprisal ( and over a route that is challenging ). This mass participation phenomenon has recently been seen in other sports too such as ‘ park runs ’ in running and the hugely successful SUPbikerun triathlons .
Those particular triathlons have seen nearly 300 people paddling SUPs in their events , which when you do the head count , is actually more than any other current SUP event in the UK . The only SUP race that approaches anywhere near those kind of numbers in the UK is the Head of the Dart , which ironically does this by seeing two-thirds of its own entrants undertaking the ‘ leisure ’ ( non-racing ) category .
Taking this at face value , maybe the reason SUP race participation possibly hasn ’ t skyrocketed is because events aren ’ t catering to what the grass-roots paddlers actually want . For example , you can now race on rivers , seas , downwind , do it technical , do it over huge distances , do it on an inflatable or do it on a board of any length . However , these are objective choices . What the most popular events seem to be doing ( such as the Paris Crossing in France that gets 600 + paddlers and sells out in mere hours ), is focusing more on the actual emotional experience of the day . A guy like me will spend hours trawling over their data , tweaking training plans and have a mood that will shift from sublime happiness to one of infernal damnation depending on where I finish . But when it comes to sport though , I am elitist , I ’ m certainly not normal and I ’ m definitely not the core market .
Is water the problem ? Is SUP never going to go mass participation because many people have a fear or dislike of being on or in water ? ( Watching Jaws 2 at aged 10 sure as hell ‘ encouraged ’ me to be faster with my capsize drill when I raced sailing dinghies back in my youth !). Take a sport like open water swimming ; this has also been booming . Back over on the River Dart again and their open water swim event this year had over 1,600 swimmers – and that ’ s coming from a competitive sport that was virtually non-existent a decade ago . I don ’ t think water is the problem if you package it right .
So what should SUP take from this ? Well , it involves a decision . The decision is whether the event focuses on the needs of a handful of chiselled athletes pushing the boundaries of athletic excellence or between hundreds of Joes and Janes exploring the world from a different point of view together . These are mutually exclusive and the answer could ultimately make or break SUP as a sport .
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