Quiksilver deserts three-cornered ring

Prize money is almost double the $535,000 for men and women at Australia's premier event, at Bells Beach, Victoria, which begins next week.

Long Island's first prize is $US300,000 ($288,000), the highest ever for any event.

It is a big multiple of the $2000 won by Michael Peterson in the inaugural Coke Surfabout in 1974, a tournament run by a young journalist, Graham "Sid" Cassidy, who later served as sports editor for the Herald.

The Association of Surfing Professionals Tour began in 1977, and the big three surfwear companies, Rip Curl, Billabong and Quiksilver, have controlled the sport.

The entry of Nike into the industry last year, buying into the minnow surf company Hurley, threatened the big three. Nike promoted the US Open at Huntington Beach, California, paying total prize money of $600,000 for what is in effect an ASP Tour second-tier event.

Quiksilver's Long Island purse is for a new ASP world championship event and the first time the sport has gone to New York.

In surfspeak, Quiksilver is "taking the drop" or lateral move.

First, it is a clear challenge to its rivals and its fellow ASP tour stakeholders Rip Curl and Billabong that Quiksilver is breaking ranks.

It is also a statement to Nike, which transformed the US Open into something equivalent to five times the size of the Bells Beach tournament, hiring IMG International for sponsorship and marketing.

It also represents a "roundhouse cutback" by Quiksilver, insofar as it has taken the sport full circle, back to the '70s, '80s and early '90s when big events were staged at bums-on-seats locations.

By taking the action to New York, it boosts the sport's chances of improved media coverage, thus providing a solid argument for attracting big company sponsorship.

In 1994 when the ASP changed to a so-called Dream Tour, scheduling events in exotic wave locations rather than city beach sites, Quiksilver was the first to the party, launching a new world championship tournament at G-Land, Java. G-Land offered superb, death-defying left-handers on a jagged reef in tropical paradise.

Surfers embraced the new tour, delighted they were able to purvey their wares on the best waves. But the surfwear companies were shaping the sport in their own image.

By making the athletes dependent on the industry, rather than spectators, sponsors and broadcasters, it allowed the big three to gain an even bigger stranglehold on the shape, philosophy and quasi-ownership of the tour.

Cassidy and Ian Frykberg of Sydney, a sports marketing executive, saw the opportunity of wresting control of the sport from the surfwear manufacturers when they offered ASP a partnership in 1996 with CSI, an international sports production and TV rights company.

Their five-year offer, beginning the following year, included a time line that pledged a world tour prize-money pool of $1 million by 2002.

The big three, with their close links to the world's best surfers, aborted the deal.

But Nike's entry last year threatened their grip, and now Quiksilver has gone it alone in a back-to-the-future move to city beaches. The surfers may not like the bath tub ripples off Long Island, but they cannot resist the prize money.

Rip Curl's Bells Beach event is at a location which is close enough to Melbourne to attract spectators, but the landscape and setting are epic enough to give it iconic status.

Billabong hosts its professional event in Rio de Janeiro from May 11 to May 22, but it is Quiksilver's Long Island tournament that threatens to cast the industry anchor aside and earn the athletes $1 million, even if it is 10 years late.

But Nike and Hurley are not treading water. They are working on a big new event at Manly next year. Their advisers include two world champions from the 1970s, riders who won their reputations at bums-on-seats venues.