Making waves:

Could artificial wave pools create the next generation of British competitive surfers?

By Gabriel Roberts

In February 2011, the Wavegarden company uploaded a video of people surfing waist-high peeling waves in murky brown water.

While this might not sound particularly impressive compared to the glassy waves found in tropical locations elsewhere in the world, these waves were entirely man-made, generated miles from the sea in an inland lagoon.

The reveal of the Wavegarden testing facility in the Basque Country in 2011 marked a new chapter in artificial wave technology and sparked a renewed interest in land-locked surf facilities.

The first artificial waves were created in the 1870s by Ludwig II of Bavaria, who built an electrified "wave-maker" in an underground lake beneath his castle. Throughout the 20th century, wave machines began to appear in swimming pools around Europe, first in Munich in 1929 and later in Budapest and London.

It was not until 1969 that Big Surf, the first wave pool specifically for surfing, was built in Tempe, Arizona. Other inland surfing facilities appeared in other parts of the world towards the end of the 20th century, but with limited impact on the sport globally.

Since Wavegarden unveiled their technology in 2011, the last decade has seen private and commercial facilities spring up in the UK, USA, Australia, Switzerland, South Korea and Brazil.

While the UK currently has two surfing wave pools, Surf Snowdonia in north Wales and The Wave Bristol (both built with Wavegarden technology), there are plans in the works for many more. In 2021, Trafford Council approved plans for a £60 million Wavegarden facility near the Trafford Centre in Greater Manchester.

The Lee Valley Regional Park Authority is also working with The Wave Bristol to bring surfing to London. They are developing an application to transform an existing lake at the Lee Valley Leisure Complex in Edmonton, north London into a £40 million inland surf facility.

The video that amazed the world: surfers enjoy land-locked waves at the Wavegarden in 2011.

Both of the UK's current wave pools use Wavegarden technology. (Credit: Author)

Both of the UK's current wave pools use Wavegarden technology. (Credit: Author)

The Wave opened in Bristol in 2019. (Credit: Author)

The Wave opened in Bristol in 2019. (Credit: Author)

The UK's first wave pool opened in northern Wales in 2015 (Credit: Adventure Parc Snowdonia)

The UK's first wave pool opened in northern Wales in 2015 (Credit: Adventure Parc Snowdonia)

Wavegarden claims its Cove technology can create up to 1,000 waves an hour. (Credit: Author)

Wave machines typically found in swimming pools use pneumatic pumps to suck water into reservoirs and then dump it into one end of the pool. Big Surf, Arizona, used this technique in 1969 to create three to five foot crumbling waves every 45-80 seconds.

The UK’s first commercial wave pool, Surf Snowdonia uses an underwater hydrofoil to make waves up to six foot high. The hydrofoil is towed through the middle of the lagoon, displacing the water and creating waves on either side of the central pier.

This technology allows wave pools to generate bigger, steeper waves than before and surfers can now pull off more impressive manoeuvres. Crucially, however, the hydrofoil can only create one wave at a time.

The UK's second wave pool, The Wave in Bristol, went on to feature Wavegarden's Cove technology, which significantly increased wave count and surfer capacity. An underwater mechanical paddle pushes water outwards to one side of the pool and swings back to push water on the other side. Further paddles hidden along a central pier can make adjustments as the wave travels across the pool.

On the "Advanced" setting, The Wave creates 200 to 300 waves an hour for around 14 surfers on each side of the pool. For comparison, Surf Snowdonia only allows three people on each side to enjoy its largest wave setting at a time and it takes 90 seconds to create each wave.

The Wave Bristol in action. (Credit: Author)

Despite the sport's association with soulful, sun-bleached hippies, surfing has a long and rich history of competitions.

Formed in 1964, the International Surfing Association (ISA) is recognised by the International Olympic Committee as the global governing body of surfing. The ISA runs the annual World Surfing Championship, where surfers compete for medals under their national banner.

Conversely, the World Surf League (WSL), formed as the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) in 1983, takes a more individual approach. On the Championship Tour (CT), the world's best surfers compete for money and points at various events across the world to keep their spot on the tour and avoid being relegated.

The shortboard category — narrow, agile boards under seven feet in length — is the most popular competitive format, but there are also events for longboards, para-athletes, and big wave surfing, where brave souls tackle waves measuring 25 feet tall and above.

In each round of competition, two to four surfers attempt to catch their most impressive waves in 20 minutes, and are rated out of 10 on their best two. Each wave is assessed on several criteria such as commitment and degree of difficulty, or speed, power and flow.

With its inclusion at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics for the first time, surfing was exposed to a global audience like never before. The top surfers from the WSL, ISA and Pan American Games were invited to compete with a limit of two entrants per country.

However, competitive surfing is not without its criticisms and there was fierce debate over its inclusion in the Olympics. Some believe that assigning scores to waves goes against what they see as the expressive and subjective nature of surfing. Surfing's reliance on unpredictable natural conditions also means professionals may have to make do with small or uninspiring waves, which was a source of concern before the Olympics last year.

Carissa Moore (HAW) faced off against Bianca Buitendag (RSA) in the finals of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Nick Hounsfield, The Wave founder and Chief Visionary Officer.

Although Team GB did not qualify for the Olympics, the UK has certainly produced some impressive surfers over the years. Russell Winter qualified for the Championship Tour in 1999, 2001 and 2002 as one of only two British surfers to do so. 11-time European longboarding champion Ben Skinner has been a major player on the international Longboard Tour for the last decade. Melissa Reid, a visually impaired surfer, is the UK's first female world champion after her two wins at the AmpSurf ISA World Para Surfing Championships in 2019 and 2020.

But when looking at the global rankings, there are several countries which consistently come out on top: Australia, America, Hawaii and increasingly in the last decade, Brazil.

Professional surfer and 2021 British champion, Stanley Norman, 19, thinks this is due to the consistency of waves found in different parts of the world and the level of support offered to surfers.

"If you live at Snapper Rocks in Australia, one of the best waves in the world, and you're surfing there all the time around loads of good surfers who have come from there, you're obviously going to be pushed to surf just as well as them.

"But I think it just makes all the British surfers more hungry for it, so we don't get out-surfed by them."

Hailing from Bude, Cornwall, Norman surfs every day, if not twice, and trains in the gym three times a week. On calm days, he will visit the gym or go swimming instead.

So, could artificial wave pools be a useful tool for training then? Norman finds that there are almost always waves to surf at his local beach but he thinks that wave pools could instead be useful to develop specific techniques.

"In the sea, it's hard to work on the same thing because you're always getting different waves. So in that aspect, The Wave is good, because then you can work on your technical side of surfing. You can work on something over and over."

The Wave Bristol founder and Chief Visionary Officer, Nick Hounsfield, also sees the potential in wave pools as a reliable training ground for surfers.

"Right back at the beginning, I said this could really revolutionise our sport from a competitive point of view. Now having access to perfect waves day in, day out, and being able to train on them and to video it and get great analysis has got to be something that is going to be a great training tool.

"When you've got people coming from Portugal and Spain and France who've been catching loads of waves, they've got a huge competitive advantage against the UK athletes, unless our UK athletes train abroad, or potentially, use a wave pool."

In competitions, doing "airs" — launching off the wave into the air — and getting "barrelled" — disappearing into the wave as it forms a hollow tube — generally score high marks.

Following feedback from professionals, Nick and the team at The Wave are currently working on a specific wave section to allow surfers to practise aerial manoeuvres repeatedly.

Both UK facilities currently offer waves from 0.5m to 2m, but surfers may need to compete in conditions that far exceed that. Teahupo'o, French Polynesia, has been confirmed as the location for the 2024 Paris Olympics surfing: a reef break which is infamous for enormous barrels and reportedly translates to "wall of skulls" in Tahitian.

The majority of the surfers with whom Norman trains come from Devon and Cornwall, but opening new wave facilities around the country means exposing a completely new range of people to the sport: a prospect which excites Hounsfield.

"It's brilliant. If we can't get people down to the beaches, because of transport or economics or geography or many other different reasons, then why not bring the ocean to them? To be able to democratise the waves and make them accessible for everyone."

He is also keen to emphasise the accessibility of artificial wave facilities for beginners and para-surfers. At Surf Snowdonia and The Wave, beginners can wait in the shallow end to catch the waves as they decrease in size and power. The regular, hard flooring also allows people with physical disabilities to access the waves more easily compared to soft sand and varying beach infrastructure. In July, The Wave will host the English Adaptive Surfing Open for the third time.

Hounsfield said: "From our perspective, the Cove technology does provide a really decent experience if you're a really good surfer. But also, and more importantly to us is making sure that we can provide a great experience for people trying it for the very first time so that we can grow the sport and give more people access to it."

Former professional surfer Nachman Yariv Balulu waits for his heat at the English Adaptive Surfing Open at The Wave in 2021. (Credit: Image Cabin/The Wave)

Former professional surfer Nachman Yariv Balulu waits for his heat at the English Adaptive Surfing Open at The Wave in 2021. (Credit: Image Cabin/The Wave)

In 2016, Nigel Semmens, the UK’s most successful surfer in the 80’s and now a celebrated surfboard shaper, told Wavelength magazine: "I don’t think there’s a pathway now for British kids to be a professional surfer. If you want to be a footballer, you can go and join the club, go into their academy, get with the best coaches – surfing in England doesn’t have that."

Although he competes internationally for Team England, Stanley Norman trains privately with his surfing coach, Joel Gray, and a physical strength coach. The funding for his training and travel comes from sponsors and any prize money from competitions.

After surfing was confirmed for the Tokyo Olympics, UK Sport awarded the National Governing Body British Surfing £1.35 million in Olympic funding for the first time in 2020. As a "Progression" sport, the funding from UK Sport aims to "to build a more sustainable performance system and thriving high performance culture." Higher levels of funding are reserved for "Academy" and "Podium" sports which UK Sport thinks could be capable of winning medals within 4 years.

While this is certainly a step in the right direction, it pales in comparison to the $5.5 million AUD (£3.2 million) that the Australian government and New South Wales administration spent alone on a high performance surf training centre in 2017.

Sir Hugh Robertson, the chair of the British Olympic Association, told the Guardian in 2021: "To win a gold medal, you need four things: money, structure, coaching and athletes with the right sort of preparation and mental toughness.

"The money enables the sports to put the right structure, to find the right coaches and, crucially, it allows the athletes to be able to train full time."

The expansion of wave pools across the UK will definitely introduce a wider population to the sport and allow surfers to train in a consistent, accessible environment. However, without significant financial backing to allow them to concentrate on realising their potential, this will likely not be enough for UK surfers to truly compete on the global stage.

Norman said: "Surfing was a hobby for me and it's turned into my job. But a lot of people don't see it as something you can make money out of.

"Especially now it has hit the Olympics, hopefully people will see surfing as more of a professional sport, like football or rugby. Because we all surf and train and dedicate our lives to it so it's nice to get some recognition for that."

Thank you to Stanley Norman, Nick Hounsfield and The Wave for their help with this article.