Steve West is wrong, as usual. His background is windsurfing and OC, and has jumped on the SUP bandwagon every bit as much as those he criticises. Culturally it would make more sense for SUP to be run by kitesurfing bodies than canoe ones (and no I'm not advocating that, I'm just illustrating the point) since most of the leading brands are windsurfing ones. Are ANY of them OC brands? Moreover, hardly anyone (i.e maybe >1%?) who SUPs also paddles OC, especially outside Hawaii/Tahiti. You can't just sweep away the backgrounds and interests of the practitioners and companies that have made SUP so successful. The ISA and ICF, and probably the OC community would probably rather SUP had been strangled at birth.

I don't know how as a community we tell BOTH the ISA and the ICF (and anyone else similar who comes along) to LEAVE US ALONE, but I hope we find a way. Surfers hate us. Canoeists/Kayakers hate us. OC think we are just a novelty. Why on earth would we want to be dragged into a party we don't want to go to, and where everyone there will be looking down their noses at us. SOD OFF and leave us alone!

In his defense my take is that Steve West isn’t really a fan of the ICF taking the reins to put SUP in the Olympics so much as he considers it the lesser of two evils between it and the ISA (which very few surfers are a fan of).  In other posts he holds the opinion that he would rather see SUP have its own governing body (like most of us) and even then like many others I get the impression he would rather not see SUP in the Olympics at all (which I agree with).
You are correct that less than 1% of SUP paddlers are also OC paddlers but whether or not OC paddlers consider SUP just a novelty I can’t really say but most that I know also paddle SUP (maybe it’s different here in the States vice the UK).  As to surfers hating us, yeah that’s still pretty much true but it seems to be softening up here and there.  Canoeist/kayakers hating us just not something I’ve come across.  Again, maybe it’s just my neck of the world.  Can’t really say for sure.
Everything you posted goes back to exactly why I don’t even want SUP in the Olympics at all.  Surfing (which I don’t want that to be in either) or racing.

I hope not.......look at the BS it's already causing. I agree with Area 10...SOD OFF! and leave us alone.

I think I'm going to start saying SOD OFF! from now on...sounds so much better than fuck you......

Let them make a Olympic one design inflatable and go play off in a corner all to themselves. Leave the rest of the sport alone.

Quote from: Area 10 on June 21, 2017, 02:28:02 PM

Steve West is wrong, as usual. His background is windsurfing and OC, and has jumped on the SUP bandwagon every bit as much as those he criticises. Culturally it would make more sense for SUP to be run by kitesurfing bodies than canoe ones (and no I'm not advocating that, I'm just illustrating the point) since most of the leading brands are windsurfing ones. Are ANY of them OC brands? Moreover, hardly anyone (i.e maybe >1%?) who SUPs also paddles OC, especially outside Hawaii/Tahiti. You can't just sweep away the backgrounds and interests of the practitioners and companies that have made SUP so successful. The ISA and ICF, and probably the OC community would probably rather SUP had been strangled at birth.

I don't know how as a community we tell BOTH the ISA and the ICF (and anyone else similar who comes along) to LEAVE US ALONE, but I hope we find a way. Surfers hate us. Canoeists/Kayakers hate us. OC think we are just a novelty. Why on earth would we want to be dragged into a party we don't want to go to, and where everyone there will be looking down their noses at us. SOD OFF and leave us alone!

If you're able to read steve's Facebook thread, you'll see both him and myself going at each other. The key difference between he and I is that he is too anchored in its traditions and looking backwards whereas I know how sports policy works and they are only typically looking forwards.

The sport won't be left alone - there is too much money at stake and the it fits the criteria for what the IOC is looking for in the longer term.

Steve West and I have a long history of disagreeing with each other. It started when I attended a race he was organising in order to support a friend of mine who was racing. My crime? I didn't want to race myself (I paddled to the venue just to watch and cheer the racers on). He publically shamed me via social media, saying that people who attended races should race, otherwise they were letting the sport down. As someone who loves paddling, but not competing, I begged to differ, and then he started the insults. In one memorable exchange, his wife (yes his wife) said to me "kiss my hairy arse!"....TMI

Later, he set up a webpage that detailed his attempts to establish a record time for paddling round a Hayling Island. Since he was a self-proclaimed paddle professional, I was then surprised to find that after a bit of training I was able to beat it. By quite a lot. And that's when he got particularly shirty via social media (again), calling me all sorts of names...

So, I respect his achievements with Mistral. And he has an interesting point of view on SUP - although I usually disagree with it (as you say he seems weighed down by what he perceives to be the history of SUP). But I make all reasonable attempts to avoid him on social media. No doubt other people have had better experiences, but those have been mine, going back to some of the earliest days of SUP in the UK.