Adaptive Surfing is One Sport You Won’t See at The Paralympics – Yet

The Paralympics have arrived, but one sport you won’t be watching is adaptive surfing. As the community advocates for the sport’s inclusion in the 2028 LA Games, founder of Australia’s first adaptive surf school, James Gissing, shares the journey many take to ride waves again.

The sun on the beach is stifling. I wipe the sweat away and smear zinc up my forearm and all over the blue comp rashie I’m wearing. Bailey’s heat is in 15 minutes and we have to get him in the water. I glance at my watch, ‘Righto!’. With a few slaps on the back and some hooting and carrying on from the support team, we’re ready to go.

We start jogging up the beach, pushing Bailey in the beach wheelchair at The Pass, Byron Bay. Bailey’s holding his speaker in his one good hand, Eye of the Tiger blasting. We jog through the crowd of spectators and other athletes, my heart beats in my throat. We get all kinds of looks, most people have never seen anything like this.

*Dun, dun dun dun, dun dun dun, dun dun duuuuun*

It’s 3-4ft, light offshore wind, the competition area is set up just down from the point at Clarkes Beach. The cool water is a relief and helps settle my nerves. Russ and Tom get Bailey out of his chair and onto my back and I piggyback him through the shorebreak. The sweep, the current running south to north, takes us straight to the comp area.

Once out the back, Bailey and I are on our own, waiting for the heat to start. There’s a mutiny between my ears. I take deep breaths to try to settle but there’s a soft focus to everything around me. Bailey is calm and his confidence helps to calm me. I try to focus on what I can see, feel, and hear. I dunk my head underwater a couple of times, and it helps quieten the noise, but just for a moment.

We’ve never surfed waves like this, shit Bailey only went solo three months earlier. Before that he couldn’t even lay on his stomach because of a permanent ‘peg’ that he was fed through. 

‘We don’t have to do anything, if this feels unsafe’, I tell myself. 

‘It’s your call, if anything happens to Bailey it’s on you. If it’s too heavy, too big, the board’s not right.’ 

The buzzer announcing the beginning of Bailey’s heat snaps me out of my neg-spiral.

‘Good luck fellas…’ someone says, and I noticed for the first time the other athletes and their teams in the water around us. You know what, Bailey can decide, it’s his name up there not mine.

I come around to the front of the board to talk to him. 

‘Righto Bails! This is it’, I say ‘You good?’. 

I notice my own voice shaking slightly. Bailey, as nonchalant as anything, raises his hand to start spelling. I concentrate really hard as I read the sign language knowing that whatever he says next is to decide our fate. 

F…U…C

‘Fucking,’ I said, he nods with a cheeky grin. I know what’s coming. 

S… E 

‘Send it.’ 

I smile and get to work. We can’t sit inside where the other athletes are sitting, Bailey’s 10ft board doesn’t stand a chance of making it through those sucky sections. We have to wait for a bomb – that is a big set wave – to sit further out, chip in, get down the face, and through the inside section before he has a chance to nose-dive. I take a look at one but decide against it. I watch some go through, barrelling on the inside and think, ‘Bailey doesn’t stand a chance on those’. 

Then a big fat one walls up in just the right spot. I have no idea if we have priority or not, only that we have to go.

I push that 10ft board as hard as I possibly can and swim after Bailey like I’m Emma McKeon on a final turn. I can’t see much, just me and the sea and the lush green headland. It sounds like the whole beach is cheering him on. I stop to get a glimpse and see Bailey in the back of the wave. He trims across the face of it with grace and makes it all the way to the channel.

Fucking send it!

I don’t think I’ve taken a breath since I let go of his board. I breathe again, the feeling of panic subsiding. I start noticing the people around me.

It’s game on. Sucking in air, smiling, and shaking my head in disbelief, tears run down my face. Three years of Bailey’s hard work and determination have led us to this moment and here he is competing in an international adaptive surfing competition. He has meaning, he has purpose, and he has perfect waves with only two others out.

Riding the Wave of Life

Bailey lives with TBI (traumatic brain injury) and his brain doesn’t talk to the part of his body that stops things going down the wrong way. So things are always going down the wrong way, meaning Bailey can aspirate (insurancey way of saying drown) a lot easier than a typical person.

Before we hit the waves that day, I briefed the water safety team on Bailey’s specific risks. There was a jet ski floating in the channel on standby and we put a nose peg on him like a synchronized swimmer (even if Bailey’s mouth is shut, water through his nose can run straight into his lungs). Still, to a lot of people, the risk sounds unacceptable. But for the few seconds Bailey’s on a wave, he’s alone and he’s free. There’s no chair, no carer, no therapist, no doctors, no mum, no annoying pusher, just him and the ocean.

Dude you get the best barrels ever dude | Photo by Tommy Pierucki

Bailey acquired this TBI whilst riding his bike just three years prior when he was 15. He was crossing the road when the driver of a white ute was looking at their phone and everything changed. Bailey was once the type of kid who played every sport and did it well. Surfing is one of them. Step by step Bailey has managed to claw back a life that’s as meaningful and important as the one he had before the accident. A credit to himself and his family, especially Mum, Julie, without whom we’d all be a little lost.

Bailey was 18 at the comps in both Byron Bay and Hawaii. He’ll be 19 when we go to California in a week for the final stop on the AASP (Association of Adaptive Surfing Professionals) World Tour.

Competing at the home of surfing!

But wait, what is adaptive surfing?

First of all, you’ll hear adaptive surfing and para surfing used interchangeably. Para is actually short for parallel, but it’s what the Olympics have run with for a long time. Adaptive is more accurate and modern, and it’s what most para sports are beginning to use.

There are nine classifications as defined by the AASP (Association of Adaptive Surfing Professionals)

1. Upper Limb Standing (ULS) – Any surfer who rides the wave standing with an upper limb amputation or deficiency or short stature
2. Below the Knee Standing (BKS) – Any surfer that rides the board in a standing position with a below-the-knee amputation, lower limb deficiency
3. Above the Knee Standing (AKS) – Any surfer that rides the board in a standing position with an above-the-knee amputation or limb deficiency
4. Any Knee Kneeling (AKK) – Any surfer that rides the board in a kneeling position with an above-the-knee amputation, bilateral below-knee amputations, or lower limb deficiency or impairment
5. Waveski (WSM/WSW) – Any surfer that rides a board in a sitting position with trunk and/or lower limb deficiency
6. Unassisted Prone (UP) – Any surfer that rides the wave in a prone position with lower limb and trunk deficiency that does NOT require assistance paddling into a wave and getting back on the board safely
7. Prone Assist (PA) – Any surfer that rides the wave in a prone position with arm, trunk, and lower limb deficiency that DOES require assistance paddling into waves and getting back onto the board safely
8. Blind/No Vision (BNV) – Any surfer that rides the wave in a standing position with a vision impairment of legal blindness
9. Blind/Low/Partial Vision (BPV) – Any surfer that rides the wave in a standing position with a vision impairment of legal blindness

Unfortunately, there’s still no classification for people with down syndrome and intellectual disabilities. This is true for all Paralympic sports.

Winners are grinners!

The Argument to Make Adaptive Surfing a Paralympic Sport

Bailey’s story is his own, but there are many like it. On that beach cheering him on were at least 50 people with stories just like his who understood exactly what they’d just witnessed. They’re the toughest people on the planet, the most versatile, the most adaptive.

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) recommended para surfing be added as a sport for LA28. However, the Los Angeles 2028 Organising Committee said it considered the ‘cost and complexity’ of para surfing and had to strike a balance between a commitment to ‘manage the size of the Games and our financial responsibility’. In other words, sorry but it’s too expensive.

LA get on board, literally!

It’s an especially hard pill to swallow when you consider surfing is California’s official state sport and LA28 is using a surfboard fin in place of an A as part of the official LA28 logo.

The comp in Byron Bay was Australia’s first international adaptive surfing event. It was facilitated by one of our most accomplished adaptive surfers, six-time world champion Mark ‘Mono’ Stewart (Any Knee Kneeling).

It’s true that there are considerable overheads, especially when held at a competition site with limited access. However this could easily be managed by holding the para surfing events at a wave pool.

‘It would give all athletes an opportunity to showcase their talent, skills, courage, and sporting prowess in consistent perfect waves’, said Mono.

This sentiment is echoed by Victoria Feige (Any Knee Kneeling) a five-time world champ representing Canada and residing in Hawaii.

If Mono and his wife Deb hosted 90 of the best adaptive surfers in the world in Byron Bay, attracting big sponsors and good prize money, what’s stopping LA28 from figuring it out? Especially when they have a passionate, resourceful host of adaptive surfers willing to compromise to make it work.

Emma Dieters, a three-time world champ and founder of Australia’s first para boardriders club pointed out that, ‘Adaptive surfing embodies the Paralympic movement’s core values of overcoming adversity, equality, and inclusion. With its growing popularity and competitive structure, adaptive surfing has the potential to become a highly successful Paralympic sport’.

Me and one of my other participants, Steve

Josh Bogle, a Hawaiian Adaptive Surfer, started a petition calling for people to ‘Share your voice to support PARA SURFING inclusion into LA28 Paralympics’. Recently the petition garnered attention and endorsement from none other than Kelly Slater, helping it gain some 20,000 signatures and counting.

‘The adaptive surfing community has grown from 250 classified athletes to almost 470 athletes from 28 countries!’ said Josh.

‘The fact that the IPC shortlisted para surfing and offered Los Angeles the opportunity to consider adding us as a new Paralympic sport proves that it’s viable’, says world champion Australian prone surfer Joel Taylor.

How did I end up here?

Personally, I was so taken by the sport that I opened Good Surf – Australia’s first adaptive surf school – a charity that’s sole purpose is to give all people access to surfing and its infinite capacity for healing, connection, and growth. We want a grassroots pathway into adaptive/para surfing. One that embraces positive risk and focuses on the holistic experience of the participant so that they can form their own authentic relationship with the ocean and wave riding, just like any typical person would. 

Read more: From Flying Planes in Arnhem Land to Helping People With Disabilities Experience the Outdoors

You just drop in and ride the barrel and get pitted, so pitted

I was an anxious, lost teen until I discovered surfing. I’d surf before and after school every day till dark, no matter the conditions. It made everything okay and it continues to be a place I’m drawn to when I need some balance and calm in my life. I’ve always taken for granted the fact that I can simply chuck my board and wetsuit in the car and go.

That’s me!

The fact is that 20% of Australians living with a disability have extremely limited access to our oceans. And as most Aussies live on the coast, this just ain’t right. 

LA28’s message that it’s too hard and too expensive to run adaptive surfing is something people with disabilities are told their whole lives. We know now in 2024 with the technology available to us, notably wave pools and all-terrain wheelchairs, that nothing is too hard. It’s just a matter of saying yes, of giving that board one big push and letting go. If not LA 2028,  it’ll be Brisbane 2032. We’ll see you there.

Yeeew!

Feature image by Tom Pierucki
Additional images provided by @gooodsurf