Arugam Bay Beachwear supports the sport of surfing in Sri Lanka
Thursday, 5 September 2013 00:00
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Arugam Bay Beachwear, one of Sri Lanka’s leading casual wear brands, has taken on the development and promotion of the sport of surfing in Sri Lanka. The brand which is youthful in nature and by its culture aligns itself with a sporting lifestyle and has an emotional connect with surfing. Surfing is one of the world’s highest growth sports and Sri Lanka has some of the best surfing locations both in the East and Southern coasts of the country. To the youth in a lot of coastal areas surfing comes naturally. The development of the surfing culture locally will also enable Sri Lanka to be recognised as a surfing destination across the globe.
Arugam Bay Beachwear in its vision to promote surfing now in its third year is working to give the sport an identity in Sri Lanka from various angles, by creating impactful surfing competitions across the island, encouraging youth and teenagers to take up surfing, training and teaching young surfers through trained instructors and holding surfing camps.
Arugam Bay Beachwear wants to also identify and then promote surfers with potential to go for camps and competition overseas to enhance their skill set, so in years to come there is a surfing pro that comes out of Sri Lanka who further raises the profile of the sport in Sri Lanka.
Arugam Bay Beachwear started ‘Arugam Bay Surf Classic’ in 2011 to give the sport an identity through an island wide competition which it could develop into an international level surfing competition. In 2013, in its third year as part of its developmental plan Arugam Bay beachwear brought down Wayne Dean the ex-world champion from Australia as an advisor and head judge to bring in more professionalism into the competition, along with Jimi Dean who is currently a hot prospect in the surfing arena in Australia, which is all part of the overall plan of Arugam Bay Beachwear to develop the sport.
In 2014 Arugam Bay aims to restructure the competition more to benefit the participants so that the competition is more in lines with international style surfing competition. Arugam Bay Beachwear will work with local surfer clubs to engage them in this program of development. This engagement started with Arugam Bay Surf Club and now the plan is to bring about more engagements to the South of Sri Lanka. Arugam Bay Beachwear has helped Arugam Bay Surf Club to get training to become surf instructors and also helped them build a surf school on the beach so that a daily income is created for administration and other purposes. Arugam Bay Beachwear is also working with the corporate sector to build the sport locally and gain recognition in a global arena.
