Thursday, September 02, 2010

webcasts, webcasts...

Let's talk webcasts (or lack of thereof), one of my favorite subjects!

The Reunion Wave Classic is underway as I type and, guess what, you can't see a live webcast on the internet.
Here's a video that shows what we're missing.

Reunion Wave Classic 2010_Teaser from Open Ocean Media on Vimeo.



Good news seem to arrive from a "mysterious" (there's no sign of it on the official website) PWA newsletter that was forwarded to me by a reader.



It says that all the next three wave events (Denmark, Sylt and Cabo Verde) will be webcasted live.
Until I see it, I don't believe it.

In the meantime, also thanks to the complete lack of waves in Maui, I've been thoroughly enjoying the fantastic live coverage of the Tahiti ASP surf contest.
The reduction from of the number of surfers participating to the world tour from 46 to 32, made for some intense heats.
Yesterday's last heat, for example, saw Pat Gudauskas pulling off a desperation rodeo flip that allowed him win the heat and stay on tour.

This one instead, is the round 2 heat in which Dusty Payne defeated Brett Simpson securing himself a place in the world tour. Only later Brett found out that he managed to keep his spot too.
Dusty was later kicked out of the contest by the usual Adam Melling (who did the same at J-bay, I think), who will now face Kelly Slater in round 4.
Another hot heat will be Mick Fanning vs Andy Irons. The three times world champion from Kauai is back to surfing pretty good and relaxed, but Fanning's surfing is so freaking sharp that it will take a really special performance to beat him.

Two more days in the waiting period and this morning, the waves are pretty small, so next call is at 12pm. First heat: Dane Raynolds vs CJ Hobgood... let's hope that they have some decent waves to express their incredible skills.
I better get in the ocean now, 'cause I sure don't want to miss that. But what to do without waves?
Mmm... maybe it's time to dust off my one man canoe...

-----

Lil 1.30pm post update. The Tahiti contest is off today and they will run all the remaining heats tomorrow starting 6.30am.
A hundred spiders will have to find a new home, since I did take my canoe in the water. So much fun... got some gopro clips, stay tuned.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

the action on reunion for me is far more spectacular than the lame contest action in tahiti.
A livecast from the wave classic with competent and professional comentatory just like the surfers live show could make windsurfing way more popular to the world. A webcast could also create some new jobs in the windsurfing world. Finding sponsors wouldn't be too difficult I think.
cheers jan

Anonymous said...

hi cammer,
found a real masterpiece of surf art.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1swPZzxv0tI
Do you like it?
Cheers jan

cammar said...

Jan,
agree with everything you say, but the fact that the action in Tahiti is lame...
It's not 10 feet Teahupoo, but it's still perfect barreling waves and those guys rip the hell out them!

Thanks for that link, awesome!

Anonymous said...

There is a steady webcam watching out the Klitmöller Bay (and other dansk spots) all over the year. If you have insomnia and wanna look on the worldcup events check out this link:

http://live.waves4you.de/ucam/index.html

Nils from Germany

cammar said...

Thanks Nils, but a webcam is far from being a webcast.
A webcast has multiple camera angles, replays, professional commentators (often ex world champions), interviews, heats on demand, etc.
BTW, let's hope for a little more wind than what I saw!

Blog reader Peter, just sent me an email with the website were the webcast will be held: http://coldhawaii.eu/worldcup/live/
Thanks!

So it looks like it's going to happen.
Being the first one, I'm sure it's going to suck (at least compared to the ASP ones), but at least it's finally a webcast of a windsurfing contest, so I promise not to complain too much...

Unknown said...

I helped my friends from http://streamfactory.dk/ with the setup here in Klitmøller.
It works pretty well!
Now I dont need to walk all the 700m.
to the beach i just follow the contest from my sofa.
Stay tuned tomorrow i think were on the air from 10:00am cet whith a fully coverage ov the loosers round.
Until then (if you can stay awake) you can se all the great action from day 2 at http://bambuser.com/channel/coldhawaii/broadcast/1018899?more-user-filters-device=all
Cheers Arne