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Sure to be a star attraction among rich kahunas, this $40 million wave machine provides six-foot bulges more Maui than millpond.
The Guardian notes, “From 2011, the world’s first outdoor artificial surfing machine will try to rival the Atlantic breakers of Devon and Cornwall using cleaned river water. The plan is to persuade surfers to take to their boards in Tower Hamlets rather than make the long drive to the West Country, where the surf is sometimes more millpond than Maui.”
Set to open in London sometime in 2011, water sports enthusiasts will be charged a fee of $60-an-hour to urban surf.
Fans of artificial waves are sometimes maligned as "chlorine surfers" by their ocean-going counterparts, but Duncan Scott, 29, the chairman of the British Surfing Association and a professional surfer, said they have a future. "Everything about the experience is fake, but the fun is real," said Scott, who has tackled artificial waves in Japan and South Africa. "Some think high-performance surfing will only really develop when we can artificially replicate the same wave again and again allowing us to perfect manoeuvres which we can then take out into real waves. It won't replace ocean surfing but it will be a good stop-gap, especially if you have to take a gamble and drive five hours to Cornwall from London. You can very easily get there and find a howling onshore wind [which ruins the waves]."
(sport.guardian)
References: sport.guardian, elitechoice.org
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