(note: his swimwear has only marginally more cloth than hers)

(note: a man in a suit is firing a rifle one handed)

Or to be more precise, the English in the 1960’s.

Sure, they had rotten teeth, but they (kinda) ruled the world. They also set the standard for many facets of human endeavour for which they are widely credited, yet until now, surfing competition has not been among them.

We all know the English made sport great. Among very many achievements, they first codified football (or ‘soccer’ if you are a moron) and of course, come up with cricket, the very finest sport of them all. But this Pathé footage of the 1967 surf champs at Porthtowan*, Cornwall, shows us more. It reveals the future of both surf competition and its broadcasting, two things very much in need of salvation.

* How nice does Porthtowan look, before they built the pebbledash council houses!?!

Here’s what we can learn from these pioneers:

– Start all heats with firearms. Shotguns preferably, fired by a man in suit and tie.

– Make em wear trunks regardless. John John wore trunks in Peniche in frigid water, coz he’s rad. Elko wore trunks at Mundaka in October because, well, because he felt… ‘warm’. These fuckers are in trunks in frigid Cornish brine, which is some serious man shit right there.

– Ban the leash. Sure, it’s only half a foot here, but letting the Top 34 or whatever they’re called now wear leashes is like having Sir Bradley W go round the velodrome with stabilisers on his bike. Lame.

– Perhaps most revealing is the actual edit itself… Enjoy the silence. Ahhhhhh. Note the absence of awful generic rock music on the highlights package. Mmmmmmmmm. Any sport that needs shitty rock music (rednecks jumping over mud hills on motorbikes, people driving powerboats, WWE wrestling, etc) over the highlights is intrinsically awful by definition, and should be forever banned.

– Again, the genius is in the storytelling. Note the lack of mention of who won, and certainly no evidence of actual scores. As we know, revealing the scores sadly leads to the very basest of all human activities; commenting on the judging on Facebook.