Shannon Eckstein belives that Surf Life Saving’s summer changes are similair to the sport’s past

Northcliffe ironman great Shannon Eckstein believes that Surf Life Saving Australia’s Nutri-Grain series changes might not provide the dramatic facelift the sport has long been seeking.

NORTHCLIFFE ironman great Shannon Eckstein believes that Surf Life Saving Australia’s Nutri-Grain series changes might not provide the dramatic facelift the sport has long been seeking.

Ironman great Shannon Eckstein. Picture: Harvpix

While the series five Nutri-Grain series rounds will unfold similarly to the 2018/19 Ocean 6 series, Eckstein believes that the new Iron X event doesn’t present much of a change from what has been done in the past.

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The Iron X event intends to combine traditional surf events like board and ski legs with stand up paddling and shore based challenges like commando crawls, sand hill climbs, rope climbing and sand bag drags.

Though after competing in reality television shows Australia’s Greatest Athlete and Deep Water, Eckstein believes that Iron X isn’t a far cry from the sport’s past.

“It has been done before,” he said.

“Over the years, ironmen have done similar things.”

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Australia’s Greatest Athlete pitted eight of Australia’s most talented athletes against each other in various sporting challenges while Deep Water saw six of Australia’s leading ironmen undertake a number of physically demanding challenges such as cliff jumping and underwater race swimming, which is set to be a big feature of the Iron X event.

“On Australia’s Greatest Athlete, we competed against other Australian athletes and ironmen went quite well in the other sports,” Eckstein said.

“Deep Water was similar as well.”

Top Surf Lifesaving ironmen Ky Hurst, Cain Eckstein, Shannon Eckstein, Matt Poole, Kendrick Louis and Tanyn Lyndon who were part of the Deep Water cast.

While the jury is still out on Iron X, Eckstein believed that the inclusion of the Coolangatta Gold as a series round is a long overdue move.

“I think the Coolangatta Gold becoming part of the series is a good thing and should have been done for a while now,” he said.

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Round one of the new look series kicks off on October 13 with the Coolangatta Gold.