RippleEffect

Boardfest returns to Huntington Beach Pier for Labor Day weekend, with no bearing on the world tour and a new surfing format that allows girls and women to compete in levels from beginner to pro-am.

They’ll also participate in clinics with athletes who have turned surfing into lifestyles and careers.

What will not be included in the curriculum is some harsh reality the pros involved are all too familiar with: Theirs is a sport with little stability and lots of uncertainty.

There are few events to begin with, seemingly just enough to satisfy the industry, and contests that are on the calendar one year may not be there the next.

Nowhere is this more evident than in California, where five previously high-profile contests from Santa Cruz to San Diego are missing from the 2006 Assn. of Surfing Professionals’ schedule, leaving only one.

Reasons vary, but a common complaint among corporations that sponsor local women’s events is that the return on their investment, primarily in the form of media exposure, does not justify the cost.

Additionally, young female consumers who have bought into the lifestyle are not necessarily fans to the degree that boys are, so surfwear companies must reach them other ways.

Women’s surfing in general, despite an all-time high number of participants and robust apparel sales, may finally be losing some of the magic generated by the release of the 2002 movie “Blue Crush.”

“It’s been a sad year,” said Holly Beck, president of International Women’s Surfing and a headliner at Boardfest ’06. “The success of ‘Blue Crush,’ along with the WB’s ‘Boarding House’ and MTV’s ‘Surf Girls,’ thrust the image of female surfers into the public eye, and suddenly a girl with a surfboard was one of the coolest images imaginable.

“Now, it seems to me that the trend is beginning to fade.”

Most notably absent from this year’s schedule is the Rip Curl Malibu Pro, which for the previous two years had been the only women’s World Championship Tour event on the United States mainland.

Rip Curl spent $500,000 to stage last year’s contest. The impending arrival of a giant south swell boosted anticipation.

“Yet with all of the great things going for it, the coverage we got, even in the core media, was incredibly low,” said Neil Ridgeway, director of global marketing for Rip Curl International. “It was like banging your head against a wall.”

This week the Australian apparel company is staging the Rip Curl Pro Mademoiselle in France. The move was a double whammy for Southland surfing, as it was scheduled during the same dates as Boardfest, forcing Boardfest promoter Mike Kingsbury’s hand.

With his star power diminished, Kingsbury chose not to pay the sanctioning fee and other costs mandated by the ASP, and his event fell from a World Qualifying Series four-star contest to a non-sanctioned interactive surf-skate-snowboard festival -- sponsored by Hello Kitty and KTLA -- with an empowerment theme.

“When we realized there was a conflicting international competition, it made sense for Boardfest to open its doors to the many talented girls in our own backyard,” Kingsbury said.

Also falling by the ASP wayside were the SG Lowers Pro in San Clemente, the Queen of Surf in San Diego and the women’s portion of the O’Neill Coldwater Classic at Santa Cruz. All were four-star WQS contests worth considerable points counting toward WCT qualification.

This year the six-star U.S. Open and the comparatively meaningless one-star O’Neill Pro, both at Huntington Beach Pier, were the only opportunities for West Coast pros to compete close to home. The men’s WQS tour, by comparison, has 41 WQS contests, five in California.

Two years ago, six of the 16 women’s WQS events were in California, with five in Southern California, headquarters for much of the surfing industry.

The men’s and women’s tours are not supported by live television, as lengthy contest windows and global venues make that impractical. Rather, media exposure is largely in surf magazines and on the Internet, and men get the lion’s share of coverage.

Meg Bernardo, manager of the ASP North America office in Huntington Beach, said the packaging of women’s events to make them more appealing to sponsors would be the focus of regional meetings this month. “We have a lot of reevaluating to do,” she added.

Meanwhile, women’s surfing is riding higher than ever in some respects. A recent Board-Trac survey estimates that 33% of the 2 million recreational surfers in the U.S. are female, nearly triple the percentage before “Blue Crush.”

A Surf Industry Manufacturers Assn. survey states that women’s apparel accounted for 23.9% of an overall sales figure of $787 million in 2004.

Contributions of past superstars cannot be discounted. Lisa Andersen, who won four world titles in the 1990s and single-handedly lifted women’s surfing from obscurity, was the inspiration behind the popular Roxy brand, a women’s division under the Quiksilver umbrella.

Likewise, six-time world champion Layne Beachley had a powerful impact for the Australian company Billabong.

Then came “Blue Crush,” which portrayed the sport in such an appealing light that girls throughout the country were drawn to the lifestyle, if not the sport.

Evan Slater, editor of Surfing magazine, said, “I don’t think this new crop of recreational surfers really care or identify with the world’s best, which is why you’re seeing less pro events in the U.S. than before.”

Because of this different dynamic, surfwear companies are increasingly developing juniors programs and fostering relationships between the public and their top athletes by having them conduct surf camps.

Meanwhile, the contest platform, even if limited, remains a vital tool to drive product sales, for without it there would be no champions.

“And everyone can relate to a world champion,” Rip Curl’s Ridgeway said. “It’s important for us to sponsor these events so there can be winners. There has to be a victory dais for them to stand on.”

Even if it is halfway around the world.

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pete.thomas@latimes.com