Bodyboarding (aka Boogie Boarding)

Bodyboarding (aka Boogie Boarding)

On the afternoon of July 7, 1971, the bodyboard was born. Tom Morey, a surfboard builder with a background in math and engineering, had left his California surfboard business to relax and design on the island of Hawaii. On that momentous day, staring out at the surf without a board to ride, Morey borrowed an electric carving knife and a household iron, whittled some scrap polyethylene foam into a small rectangular mat and covered it with newspaper. He found his invention (first dubbed S.N.A.K.E. -- side, navel, arm, knee, elbow) easy to produce and even easier to navigate. In 1973, he trademarked the name Morey Boogie for $10 and scrounged together enough money to place a quarter-page ad in Surfing magazine.

Demand for Morey's boards was marginal at first, but built geormetrically. By 1977, he was producing 80,000 /year, mainly sold in the United States. The following year, limited rights to Morey-Boogie were purchased by Kransco (and later resold to Mattel Toys [1994], then Wham-o, Inc. [1998]), with Morey hired intermittently as a consultant). Boogieboarding (or bodyboarding) was an activity that, unlike surfing, offered a gentle learning curve and could be enjoyed immediately by even the most sedentary of people. Boards were affordable -- less than $100 for the top of the line, 15 bucks for a drugstore special -- and the sport caught on worldwide.

As lineups become congested with bodyboarders, many of them incompetent, resentment toward the sport mounted. Most surfers looked upon boogieboarders as second-class citizens, refusing to yield on a wave and creating derogatory monikers such as spongers, dick draggers and speed bumps. But like it or not, bodyboarding is here to stay.

The first professional bodyboarding contest was the 1979 Morey/Gap event at Huntington Beach, won by Californian Mike Lambresi, who evolved to conventional surfing and went on the become a three-time U.S. professional champion. From there, the Surecraft/Coca-Cola Challenge was held at Pipeline the next year, boasting a $5,000 purse and won by John Patterson. In 1982, Pipe became host for an event known as the World Bodyboarding Championships, an annual gathering determining the king of the sport and continuing to this day. Bodyboarding found its first hero the next year in blond-haired, blue-eyed Hawaiian Mike Stewart.

Dominant under any conditions, Stewart was a maestro at Pipe, winning that event a record 11 times, not to mention being an eight-time U.S. champion. Considered the world's premier big-wave barrel, Pipeline was merely survived by stand-up surfers, while Stewart made it his personal playground. He rode it deeper than any other human and launched unfathomable aerials and barrel rolls on sections other people avoided completely. Still among the world's top riders at the end of the '90s, Stewart eased into semi-retirement. His legacy, however, remains as bodyboarders routinely ride deepest and fly highest of all wave riders.
In contrast to surfing, which remains dominated by the United States and Australia, bodyboarding has acquired more multicultural control. While those countries still produce some viable contenders, many of the world's top bodyboarders now hail from Brazil, South Africa, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Panama and the Canary Islands. Guilherne Tamega from Brazil set the pace by rising to topple Stewart in 1995, becoming the first Global Organization of Bodyboarding World Champion. Unable to crack the upper echelons of the ASP (except for Brazil), these countries embraced bodyboarding, promoting it through extensive television and magazine coverage. Meanwhile, U.S. surfwear companies withdrew their support during the difficult period in the early '90s and have yet to reinvest.
It didn't take long for bodyboarding to usurp surfing in terms of numbers; the cheap and easy road will always be the most trodden. But bodyboarding has gone a step further. The most progressive-minded surfers in the world, led by Kelly Slater, are now pursuing bodyboarders when it comes to defining future performance standards. For example, Slater attempted an A.R.S., or aerial reverse spin, during the 1999 Pipe Masters. Where Slater goes, so goes surfing. In that case, we'd better keep our eyes on those f#$&in' spongers. -- Jason Borte, November 2000