Surfing Waves

Red or white?

So last week we had a surfing competition. Both of these two guys are very well known and respected surfer. They both think they got wave priority and the fans are divided.

Personally I think the red guy has priority even though he taken off later as he was closer to the lip.

I don't know anything about contest rules.....but generally speaking, my opinion, the guy who was up and riding, that was his wave and the second one up was dropping in, even if he dropped in behind the first guy. I can't see any colours, sorry.

Don't confuse contest rules on priority with normal surf breaks.
There is usually a named priority in a heat which changes can when the surfer with priority catches a wave.
A none priority can "sneak a wave " if the priority surfer doesn't try for it. If they do take priority the non priority surfer is penalised for interference. It is usual enough to lose the heat.

"Peak rule" with dominate Right, then RED had the priority even if WHITE stood up first.

If "First Up rule", then of course, WHITE has priority. ( They hardly ever use that ruling )

But as contests go, RED had priority. It sucks and it's nasty, but that's the way it is. Like they say, "It's not always the best surfer that wins".

BaNZ wrote:Personally I think the red guy has priority even though he taken off later as he was closer to the lip.

But there wasn't a lip
There was just a slightly crumblier section on a crumbly wave. There was even a crumbling "lip" briefly right next to the first guy up, but then it disappeared. The fact that the wave eventually crumbled completely made it look like the second guy up (that's the guy in red? Hard to see the colours) had priority, but it was just luck of where the wave broke.

For a crumbly wave like that with no distinct lip or direction, unusually for me, I'll just give it to the first guy standing.

The guy in the red. Simple. 9 out of 10 surfers would kick out if they were the blue surfer. If there was a priority system then it goes to whomever had priority.

Almost everyone I have ever met goes by the deeper surfer closest to the curl/pocket/peak always has priority. Anyone that ever went by the first to feet rule seemed to be people trying to abuse equipment and are often surfing the softest part of the wave.

Lots of longboard comps seem to be okay with having more than one competitor on one wave.

oldenglish wrote:Lots of longboard comps seem to be okay with having more than one competitor on one wave.

That's a very good point. Maybe initially it would have been okay, but once WHITE cut backed into RED, that impeded his ride and almost caused a collision, that's gonna draw a penalty.

Here is some photos from a comp I did.


I'm gliding in ( not paddling already ) and about to push up. Red is inside and closer to the curl. If he turns his board towards the beach and paddles, I would have to kick out.


But I know the guy and he's cool not to pull that on me, although it's perfectly legal. I was doing a fade-take off to close the gap between us to make sure he knew I wanted it. If I turned at the top to early, a rider could get in behind me like on that video.


For good measure, I gave him a good spray to get more points from the judges. If he was facing the other way, I could have gotten a " Aggressive Sweep maneuver " charged against me. So there's picky ways judges and organizers can be biased towards certain surfer.

Like Chandler said, " Contest bring out the worst in the human animal ". I hate the crap that goes on during contest. But that's the way it goes sadly.

I'm going to disagree with oldenglish. Sort of. For non contest lineups

I would say the first guy up has or should be given the right to continue surfing. He was clearly already on his feet and had caught the wave and hadn't gone for it when there was someone inside him also trying to catch the wave (to the extent there was an inside). Maybe the other guy could technically claim priority but - contests aside - its only going to create issues in the line up if you try and claim it.

In the end the overarching rule - as I interpret it - is 's/he who is in a position to catch the wave first gets priority'. Normally that is the person closer to the peak, because that is where the wave is breaking the earliest, hence where you can start surfing the earliest, and this is the default rule.

But you can't expect - in my view - start paddling after someone has actually already caught the wave and then claim priority. Again, maybe technically you can, but trying to enforce the technicalities of the law over the common sense approach is just asking for trouble. In waikikichan's example, as he said, if the red guy inside had started paddling early enough then waikikichan would have had to pull out. But (ignoring contest rules) if red hadn't made serious efforts to start paddling, once waikikichan was standing the other guys should just suck it up and let him have the wave. If the other guy was sitting 20m further in because he was on a shortboard and was never going to start paddling before waikikichan got to his feet, then tough. SUPs steal our waves, we steal shortboarders waves. The solution is to let waves go through, not to argue over peak vs first to feet or take off under someone's feet.

Here is a good explanation of the rules where I surf... it might be different in your part of the world, but I like the approach being taken. I'll accept that these rules are local variants on the 'universal' rules and that they are designed to avoid conflict, not to have a strict set of technical rules that are enforced no matter what. Note that sitting inside and deeper and trying to claim priority over someone already on the wave is seen as a form of snaking - at least for these guys. Where its not clear, first to start paddling should be given the wave. Then again, we don't have particularly crowded breaks most of the time - more than 6 or 7 and it must be a public holiday weekend. So we can afford to be most polite to each other.

http://mollymooklongboarders.com/wp-con ... quette.pdf

DTC - your views are spot on ...... for free surf. But Banz posting question was about rules during a contest. Longboards in longboard heat, contestants in Jerseys. Free surf , having fun are your local break, hell yeah, it was the first rider up's wave. But contest surfing and free surfing have different rules. Free surfing in this situation, the guy who got up after is "Snaking", which I say is double worse than "Dropping In".

waikikikichan wrote:
Like Chandler said, " Contest bring out the worst in the human animal ". I hate the crap that goes on during contest. But that's the way it goes sadly.

Exactly. Because both of the surfer is very well known and have a lot of friends. wkkk FYI the white surfer is a Japanese surfer living in Taiwan.

The judges penalized the red surfer for dropping and interfering.

It has divided the north and south surfers. The white surfer is from the south and the other one is from the north. It's known that surf spots in North Taiwan has bad etiquette and the localism is strong in south Taiwan.

I can see the judges point for penalizing RED. If you slow it down, WHITE bottom turns just a fraction before RED hands leave the deck. So as rules go, WHITE "established" his claim to the wave. The behind rider might be aloud to get up and ride, but not impede any part of WHITE's ride. But it could have gone either way and that's why there's some division.