Displaying items by tag: ASP
Ireland's Hall Knocks Out World Surfing Champ At Rio Pro
#Surfing - Irish surfer Glenn Hall pipped reigning ASP world champion Joel Parkinson for a place in the quarter-finals of the Billabong Rio Pro this week, as Australia's SBS News reports.
Thirty-one-year-old Hall - who was born in New South Wales but has dual citizenship thanks to his Irish grandfather - did not survive much longer himself in the competition at Barra da Tijuca in Brazil, being eliminated in the fifth round by South Africa's Jordy Smith.
But the ASP world tour rookie surprised many with his third-round knockout of the current world champ, who went board-to-board with 11-time champion Kelly Slater for the title last year.
Surfing's World Body to Roll Out Drug Screening
#SURFING - The world governing body for surfing is set to roll out drug screening for competitors and officials at its sanctioned events this year.
As The Guardian reports, the move by the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) comes after the drug-related death of top surfer Andy Irons in November 2010.
The former three time world champion was found to have died from a hart attack combined with "acute mixed drug ingestion".
Irish surfer Gerry Fitzgerald told the paper that drug-taking is "not sustainable" for top-level surfers on the circuit. "Athletes are training hard, the way the contests are now, it will catch up with you," he said.
Testing for performance-enhancing and recreational drugs is already carried out at a number of professional events in the UK and Ireland, according to This Is Cornwall.
Matthew Knight of the steering committee for the British Surf Championships welcomed the change, admitting that surfing had been a "dinosaur" in its approach to drug testing and needed to catch up with other sports.
However some concerns have been raised that the move could damage surfing's credibility as an 'underground' phenomenon.
"Part of its appeal is that it is counter-cultural, marginal and in some way subversive and that's where the association with drugs comes in, whether real or mythic," surfer and author Andy Martin told The Guardian. "How mainstream can surfing be before losing its soul?"
