A giant Parade of the Surfing Nations began the opening ceremonies of the Billabong ISA World Surfing Games at Jaco Beach this morning. In full “Olympic” style, over 34 nations in bright uniforms and flags flying, followed a colorful Costa Rican marching band down the main street of town, to the exited cheers of thousands posted along the parade route.

The parade finished in the Park of Jaco. There, ISA President, Fernando Aguerre, along with the Chief of the Costa Rican Tourism Department, Carlos Ricardo Benavidez, the Mayor of Garabito, Marvin Eliondo, the Manager of the ICE Group, Pedro Pablo Quiroz and the President of the Surfing Federation of Costa Rica, Jose Ureña, spoke in front of an enormous crowd of competitors and public. Billabong´s Marketing Vice-President Graham Stapelberg joined them. more…

On and on and in ever increasing numbers to justify their existance ICT or the Costa Rica Tourism Institute, released more statistics today that says “Costa Rica is increasingly a surfing destination for international travellers seeking a surf vacation. ” Does anyone find this odd? Where have the “officials” at ICT been living? I know where, at the lavish tourism shows being wined and dined by somebody and in turn wining and dining someone else. In the perpetual international wine and dine circuit where nothing gets done but the appearance of being busy and on a tight schedule.

Lucky for most of the ethical people and “international travellers” we did not have to rely on ICT to tell us about Costa Rica’s surfing opportunities. Nor did Billabong who has sponsored their first ISA World Surfing Games scheduled to take place in Playa Hermos, Costa Rica this summer.  Imagine what Costa Rica would have turned into if not for the wine and dine circuit participants of ICT figuring out that Costa Rica is a surfing mecca. Maybe they want to get their hands on some of the cash that will be flowing for a period of ten days during the World Surfing Games or maybe they needed another reason to join a different wine and dine circuit. more…

Surf sensation and 9 time ASP World Champion Kelly Slater gets slammed from readers regarding his comments during an interview with Jon Coen on EXPN. The interview took place on November 19th, 2008 in NYC so apologies for the belated entry. It was the readers comments from theinterview that alerted me to this post. I also assume that most of the readers are surfers because not to many people outside of surfing know who Kelly Slater is, even when he is announced to be in a relationship with Cameron Diaz. Most people respond by saying “Kelly who..is it a girl or guy? Even ESPN the goliath of sports news and owner of the EXPN site which posted the interview acknowledges through it’s own actions that Kelly Slater is not mainstream enough to publish an article solely on his persona.

An ESPN writer flew out to conduct an interview, spent 2-3 days with him but when the editors cut it up, the focus was on his break up with Pamela Anderson not on his surfing achievments. Only surfers can appreciate this aspect of Kelly Slater and from the comments readers posted the majority seem to agree that Kelly should stick to talking about surfing rather than engaging in opinion. During the interview, Kelly says “Terrorism is a played-out, overrated threat considering that terrorism, world-wide, might kill thousands of people a year, while cardiovascular disease kills 15 million and cancer kills, like, 12 million. Those are bigger issues in my eyes.” This comment prompted an onslaught of slams by surfers who chided that Kelly is out of touch and doesn’t understand the issues. One surfer comments, if Kelly lost his father along with thousands of other lives in the 9/11 attacks he would not be so nonchalant about terrorism being “played-out” or less important. Perhaps his cozey world of swells and beachfront locations distorts his reality. more…