As surfing completes its first-ever Olympic ride, the sport is poised for another sea change thanks to artificial intelligence and big data
TOKYO—South African surfer Bianca Buitendag uses some apps and websites to gauge wind and wave conditions before she competes, but she doesn’t consider surfing a high-tech sport. It’s mostly about trying to gauge the weather.Carissa Moore, who on Tuesday faced off with Buitendag for the sport’s first-ever Olympic gold medal, takes a different approach. She loads up on performance analytics, wave pools and science.
Their different approaches go to the heart of a long-running tension in surfing: dueling images of the spiritual, naturalist wave rider versus the modern, techie athlete. “There’s this illusion that you’re trying to sustain, even if you’re aware of all the stuff that’s gone into [surfing],” said Peter Westwick, a University of Southern California surfing historian. He’s talking about the use of advanced polymer chemistry-enabled products in surfboards and wetsuits and complex weather modeling that helps govern
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