Cowboys and Surfers: A World Apart But Two of a Kind
The Olympics just held a surfing event in Tahiti as part of the Paris games. I don’t know where Tahiti is, but from the videos, France has some of the best-looking beaches in the world.
Watching the event as the casualest of observers, the similarities between competition surfing waves like Teahupo’o and rodeo were striking. Colin Jost, reporting for NBC, even referred to the event as a Rural Circus in one of his live interview segments. If Rural Circus isn’t also a good way, maybe even the best way, of describing a rodeo, then I don’t know what is.
Surfing events and rodeo both showcase some of the craziest athletes in the world riding the awesome power of nature in complete harmony. Well, sometimes, for a brief moment anyway, before reality crashes back in a literal and visceral way.
This sometimes-violent ending in both sports creates a need for others to put themselves in danger to keep the competitor from being killed on the spot. Whether it is the water patrol pulling a surfer out of the whitewater or the bullfighters pulling a cowboy out from under a one-ton animal, the danger is real and compelling.
In the two sports, you even find echoes of the same debate over equipment like helmets. Bull riding is now much further down the road on that, but you can still see a handful riding without it, looking cowboy as hell. That isn’t a knock on the ones who do wear it – I wear one for the same reason every time I get on a motorcycle.
That tension between the old ways and the new permeates both worlds. In each, you find a subset who claim that the competitions are not the authentic version of the activity. Plenty of sentiment asserts that events like the Word Surf League aren’t real surfing, just like rodeo isn’t real cowboying. To that crowd, the true surfers and cowboys spend their days out in the elements, perpetually broke and living a vagabond lifestyle. Funny how easy it is to insert either one into that sentence.
Regardless of the internal debates in their respective communities, the most striking similarity between cowboys and surfers is the mystique. Dudes who have never seen the ocean walk around in Rip Curl shirts and people who have never been within fifty miles of live cattle wear cowboy hats on the weekend. Lots of people like the idea of being a surfer or a cowboy, but few are one.
If you consider yourself one of the true practitioners of those arts and are now thoroughly offended by something above, don’t take yourself too seriously. The attention to your lifestyle from outsiders is a compliment. After all, the giants you idolize who came before you would probably think the same way about you. Ain’t ever like it used to be…
- High Plains Surfer
