Dang, I’m out.
“Surfers will get bigger, stronger, more athletic like in all other sports through competitive selection, nutrition, and training”
Another thought I have is just the opposite direction. Miniaturization/advancements in propulsion technology- additions to surfcraft and bodysuits. Tiny jets propelling everyone around. The things that make surfing difficult today becomes easy, surfer get weaker, more girly, more mainstream and future surfers completely dependent on tech to do the basic things that make up a respectable surfer in today’s world.
No jets, but I do agree with you on the miniaturization part. Materials will get better, allowing for smaller boards. With smaller boards comes more technical tricks (look at skateboarding). Not only will technicality grow but the linking of technical tricks to each other will progress as well (again, skateboarding). Older, more established tricks (cutbacks, etc.) will still be in use, not only as a tribute to the past, but also in a new, technical manner. It will be cutback to shove-it, fakie revert to switch stance down the line floater sort of stuff.
Also, paddleboards will be shunned by the community and outlawed at all beaches unless the rider is wearing a personal floatation device, which no paddleboarder will do.
I think with the current materials available at the moment not much else will be done to be honest. CNC shaping machines have allowed more accracy and to work with finite measurements but design wise there is a lot of recycling being done, channels are back in fashion! Except for Meyherhoffer, they’ve got some funky shit going on!
Who knows what new materials will be available in the future. I do agree with Bud and Mnkstar1 that boards will become smaller and that there will be more of a skateboarding/snowboarding influence in linking tricks making them more functional and used as transitions. Boosts are going to get higher and more tweaked out for sure and probably tried at all breaks… Pros will have to be beasts physically in order to be successful and combine a serious air and rail game.
I bet wavepools will become massive. There’s gonna be a load of Rick Kanes running around the joint…who wants to be Turtle? I live in Madrid, Spain now and its a 4 hour drive to get a session in. There was a wavepool planned to open in 2017 and I was stoked to be honest, no more leaving at the crack of dawn in winter to make the tide window etc. They will NEVER replace surfing in the ocean, never. There will probably be a bunch of surfers that have never surfed a long period swell or fought against the current trying to make it to the line up that won’t know how to read the ocean or waves properly, that education is priceless as is the connection and feeling you get from interacting with the ocean. Hopefully when they do go and test what they’re made out of they will hate the hard work and feck off back to the pool!
I don’t think the future will be apocalyptic for surfing though, I bet we will all still love it.