We use to wag school to go and watch this down at Long Reef.

Yes, i don't know what the prize money is like nowaday, this comp offered the total of $50,000 and $20,000 for first place.

Hoped it was going to be an event in a NE'r because I hear it used to get windy back in those days, and wanted to see what it was like....

That's Mark Paul at the beginning riding a Bombora New Toy....

Sony event, November 1984, Long Reef, Sydney, Australia.
Robby Naish + others in the surf marathon & slalom races.

For all the amazing jumps in this vid I still find myself almost more impressed by the gybes on the face of the waves and how long they are holding on Clew 1st....

Reminds me of the crazy turn Naish does at 1:36 in

I think its to do with the 'flow' - how effortless it looks and how uninterrupted the movement is of the rider and water, big jumps are great but the landing is so stagnate, I think its the one thing kiting air has over sailing. Fully love a planning landing!

Ahh the good old days! A photo of me taken by Stu Clover was used for the promo poster at event t shirt. Still got a shirt poster and original print! Will try put it up on this post ....Allan McClintock

I was always in the top half in the wave performance and slalom at the Sony and similar contests (or close to it) and 17th in the slalom worlds, which isn't "hopeless". Sure, I wasn't the world's best wavesailor but I've always just tried to be an all-rounder rather than a specialist shortboard windsurfer.

If I was "hopeless" then so were 95%+ of people. If just about everyone was "hopeless" then it was hardly the foundation for a strong sport, which sort of proves that a sport based on sailing in waves will not be enormously popular.

It's not just "my version of history" - it's based on numbers of boards sold, official stats from several countries, and the experience of people in the industry. There are lots of other people who reckon that the shift to high-performance high-wind sailing harmed the popularity of the sport, including people like Svein Rasmussen ("Like it or not, windsurfing was a sport in decline from 1985 until 2012"), Remi Vila, Barry Spanier and others. We don't have formal records of actual numbers of sailors and boards sold in Australia but I have got information about the decline from guys like Johnnsy. In Europe they kept records of the numbers of boards sold each year, and from 1985 there was a major decline. Sure, the emphasis on performance that started in that era was great for hot young sailors like you, and for people like me - but it arguably turned off a lot of others. It's a a pity that it's a sensitive topic to people who prefer certain areas of the sport, but then again some of the same people are pretty insensitive in their remarks when the history of the sport is discussed.

Wavesailing etc is fantastic, I've never said it wasn't. My issue is the negative way that other parts of the sports were treated, sometimes in a targeted effort to turn people off them so they'd buy new boards and keep the production lines churning.