Durban
Nick Paul Surfing
Just when you think you’re sick of big emotional sporting events, when you’ve had the Comrades, and the July, and the men’s and women’s Wimbledon finals and this year the World Cup and the opening sallies of the Tri-Nations, in great big chunks, along comes the Gunston.
If you’re a Durbanite, there’s a wave of candyfloss, hotdog smoke and coconut-flavoured suntan oil to push you over the edge of sport- induced dyspepsia and pretty much ruin your appetite until after the Currie Cup.
Except that now it’s not just the Gunston, it’s the Ocean Action Festival, with beach volleyball, nightsurfing, waveski competitions, bungee jumping and national radio stations. There’s also Michelle Maclean, the biggest (and coolest, with all the extreme sports labels on discount) fleamarket in the country, over one million visitors annually, and, probably, running races.
It’s arguably the biggest single sporting event in the entire country, with 200 international competitors including shitloads of local established and development talent.
Surfing, like most sports, is a little dull and confusing from the stands, but makes for fantastic televisual opportunities, even in the grey onshore conditions which prevail for most of summer in Durban and then, like this year so far, make a surprise return for contest week.
Among the internationals competing this year are Sunny Garcia and Kelly Slater, bigger among teenaged white girls than Alannis Morisette, and just about as handsome.
Slater’s Reagan-era clean cutness (and indeed cuteness) stops in the shorebreak, where he becomes the gun- toting revolutionary he’s been for the better part of a decade – he was an early pioneer of skate moves on the open water, pulling 360s and tail slides and generally buggering around on vertical, moving faces of water like gravity was someone else’s problem.
He’s probably the sport’s leading athlete, which gives you an idea of the stature of the Gunston.
For all the hype, and tackiness and unbridled commerce, it’s a fantastic event. The layers of accumulated seaside kitsch of Durban’s beachfront were bricked over in the late Eighties, and surprisingly, this move revitalised the old place.
Alone among the coastal cities, the central beach area is used in proportionate measure by all of Durban’s citizens, from Shembe baptismal parties to Muslim joggers to surfers of increasingly representative hue. Ocean Action and the Gunston reflect and celebrate this.
The final takes place at Dairy beach on Sunday.
ENDS