Triple Crown News
Ben Marcus Interview With Triple Crown Executive Director Randy Rarick
Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 11 December, 2006 : - - In old Hawaii, the kahuna were endowed with special powers: prophecy, healing, canoe making, predicting the surf. As the Executive Director of the Triple Crown Randy Rarick is a modern day kahuna, responsible for the entire apparatus of the Hawaiian surfing events, an apparatus that goes into motion when Randy and his partner Bernie Baker sniff the wind, read the buoys, look at the satellites, consult their sub-kahuna, feel their bunions and decide the surf conditions will be worthy of a Triple Crown event.
It’s all a big deal, that requires a great deal of patience and experience, but Rarick has that experience, as he has lived on the North Shore for 35 years and has been involved with competitive professional surfing going back to the early days of the IPS and the ASP.
On Sunday, December 3, Rarick is at home, in his office, cruising a little bit during an off day in the Triple Crown. The O’Neill Sunset is on hold, and the North Shore is moving out of a period of bad weather and bad surf. Rarick answers a phone all from a guy in Las Vegas who is looking for a board to go with this woodie. Randy deals with that, and with a Brazilian guy wanting to buy some t-shirts, then he sits in his office, tries to ignore the phone and answers a few questions.
You are the guy with the starter’s pistol and a lot of things go off when you fire it.
People call me and say. ‘What day are you going to run the Pipe?’ and I always say ‘Someday” and that is the best I can say. And they’ll ask, ‘Well when is the surf coming up?’ and I’ll say, ‘It’s coming.’ But you can’t predict it to a T and even though the surf predictors have gotten pretty darn good, I give them an 80% success rate on what they predict.
Even then they can get thrown off. A lot of them use computer models based on previous stuff but Mother Nature doesn’t always spin the same way. Quite honestly I would say my success rate is 90 per cent, and the 10 per cent bad calls are usually weather related.
You talk about the mechanism that goes into motion once you make the call, and from what I have seen lately, that is a big mechanism. What are the numbers in running a modern pro contest in Hawaii?
I oversee a staff of about 160 people who answer to me: production crew, media, we oversee the whole thing. There are all these different facets and as long as everyone does their job it makes my job a lot easier. If something goes wrong as Executive Director I’m the guy who puts out the fires or who answers to the complaints that come through.
You are kind of like a movie director, deciding when to shoot, because as soon as you say go, the cash register starts spinning really fast. How much does an ASP contest cost these days?
Pipe is more expensive because it’s a WCT. The prize money is double a WQS, so they’re giving away over a quarter of a million dollars. You have all this infrastructure set up that you have to pay for: sanctioning fees, judging fees and of course the Internet costs and the TV costs. It all adds up. We pay the guy who picks up the rubbish after the event.
All together in prizemoney and production costs you’re talking about $1.5 million dollars for the Pipeline Masters. And then on top of that the sponsors have to spend money to promote it. They have to decide where to spend their money in advertising, TV, magazine ads or Internet promotion that is over and above the million and a half dollars.
And this is all more expensive because you have to bring everyone to Hawaii.
That is true, but here in Hawaii we don’t spend on catering to crowds because we don’t have as big a crowd as Lowers or Huntington Beach. On a typical day at Haleiwa or Sunset we average between 1500 and 3000 people who pass through a contest. On a weekend day that number will bump up to 3000 to 5000 and for the Pipe Masters that bumps up to 5,000 to 10,000.
Based on what I saw at the Boost Mobile contest at Lower Trestles, and watching the webcasts and downloading high res photos from the ASP website, I would say the ASP really has its act together in getting the message and action and image out to the world.
Well it’s getting better and better. What’s nice is nowadays the events are all run by [surf] industry sponsors, so they are all trying to outdo each other. Quiksilver is probably spending the most money on their events, and Billabong is right behind them trying to up the ante and then you’ve got Rip Curl trying to catch up and then you’ve got Vans and Globe and Op trying to match them and every time somebody raises the bar, the other guy has to try and top that. And the Internet is a classic example. Four years ago Internet wasn’t getting much servicing and now it is getting more servicing than TV shows.
It’s impressive and it’s working. I remember I was in Europe a long time ago and when they show the Olympics they show every run and it’s live. Surfing is now like that and it’s bringing the drama directly to everyone.
In this day and age people want instantaneous results. They don’t want to wait six weeks or two months. And sure you get a more refined and better-edited show, but you already know the outcome. It’s like, “Who shot JR?” Well we know who shot JR.
And people are tuning in?
Our numbers are interesting for the Triple Crown. When we start off at Haleiwa on the trials of the first day we get about 25,000 or maybe 30,000 people max. Then the word is out that the Triple Crown is on and that jumps to about 40,000 on day two. By the third day that jumps to 75,000 or 80,000. By the fourth day we are up to 100,000-plus and usually by the finals we are at around 150,000.
So people know the Triple Crown is on, they are aware the next event is coming up and we’re moving down to Sunset Beach. The Sunset contest usually starts with 100,000 viewers already.
Are those numbers accurate?
Oh yeah because every time someone logs on they are recorded. Then it goes from 100,000 on the first day and by the time we are done with Sunset it goes up to 400,000. And then everyone is anticipating Pipeline.
Wow. That’s a lot of eyeballs, and sponsors like eyeballs.
Last year for the Pipe Masters we had 1.2 million people online. These are dedicated viewers, these aren’t just click ons. The average viewer will come online for about 19 minutes. Some will come on and watch it for a little while, some will leave it on while they are working, but the average is about 20 minutes.
And that is the equivalent of one heat, so we figure people will see which heat their favorite surfer is in - the East Coast will watch the East coasters, the Brazilians will watch the Brazilians and everyone wants to watch the Kelly Slater heat.
It skyrockets for Slater?
Yeah actually last year we had a server crash because we had so much traffic coming in. This year we spent in excess of $100,000 on bandwith alone to make sure it doesn’t drop out on us.
Sponsors must be pretty happy?
The sponsors are happy and I think the only people who aren’t happy are the North Shore residents who have to battle the traffic and put up with the influx of people and the hoopla that comes with it. Fortunately for the Triple Crown it’s only a six week window, and it comes and goes. There are other events that come after us: the Backdoor Shootout, a WQS Pipeline event, a bodysurfing event.
You do those too?
No I am Triple Crown only but I am also Regional Director for ASP Hawaii so we sanction the other events like the Excel Pro and the Pipeline WQS. Those are sanctioned from ASP Hawaii. I assist in coordinating an event in the summertime that is part of the Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Foundation, but that is more of a charity amateur kind of deal.
My plate is way enough full from running the Triple Crown. It takes six months of planning and I don’t get much sleep during this period. There is a lot of anxiety and Numero Uno is making the call.
And it all falls on you.
Well it’s me and Bernie Baker. Bernie tends to be more of a just do it, get it done kind of guy. He likes to get it done. I tend to put a little more personal emphasis on trying to give them the best quality surf. For example tomorrow, if we wake up and the surf is four foot on the point, do we go with it or do we hold back and put it on standby and go four hours later when the surf is six foot on the point?
But now we can’t finish the event and we have to roll it into the next day. We hope to get it from six foot and go to eight foot in the evening, peaks out at 10 foot at night and we wake up and it’s gone back to six foot and going down. Is that the call we make based on the information we had? It’s a budgetary roll of the dice.
Decisions. Decisions. Experience matters.
In the old days we called Fred Hemmings “Dead Ahead Fred.” When Fred said go you had to go, and a good example of the problem with that is the year Dane Kealoha won the Pipeline Masters. It was glassy in the morning and it was three to four feet and Fred said, “I know it’s going to come up and be great!” And I said. “I don’t know Fred. This looks like kona winds and the swell doesn’t have the period…”
But he was under pressure from ABC TV and he called it on and for the first four heats it was glassy and then the wind came onshore and the swell just died and it was probably one of the most lackluster days of Pipeline ever. And I said, “I told you so” and ever since then you know I have taken the personal integrity to make sure that we deliver the best possible surf we can to the surfers, because good surf makes for a good surf contest.
Read the complete interview by Ben Marcus at LAT34.com
Check the latest Hawaii Surf Reports and Forecasts
More Hawaiian & USA Surfing News available here
New! Get the latest news with Surfersvillage News-Alerts
Source: LAT34.com
Triple Crown Updates - Surfersvillage
