Uncle Toby’s series founder Mike Porra has labelled the latest surf life saving summer changes the biggest in the sports history

Despite being the brains behind the Uncle Toby’s ironman series, Mike Porra believes that the latest swag of changes to the surf life saving summer are the biggest the sport has seen.

Despite being the brains behind the Uncle Toby’s ironman series, Mike Porra believes that the latest swag of changes to the surf life saving summer are the biggest the sport has seen.

Porra was approached by Surf Life Saving Australia to help reinvent the surf life saving summer series and revealed he spent months analysing adventure sports like the cross fit games before presenting a new look summer series set to kick off in October with the Coolangatta Gold.

Ironwoman Georgia Miller will compete in the new SLS summer series. Photo credit: Harvpix

“It’s by far the biggest changes,” he said.

“These are bigger changes than what we did with the Uncle Toby’s ironman.

“Surf asked me to analyse the series and where it is at.

“I thought there was a need to do something dramatically new because dishing up the same stuff wasn’t going to work.”

SURF LIFE SAVING’S RADICAL SUMMER CHANGES REVEALED

The most radical change will be the inclusion of a new, stand-alone, Nutri-Grain Iron X event to be held on Australia Day which will combine traditional surf events like board and ski legs with stand up paddling, an underwater swimming leg and shore based challenges like commando crawls, sand hill climbs and rope climbing.

“I had a look at some of the trends around the world in new sports like cross fit games in the United States is playing in front of arenas of 80,000 people,” Porra said.

“They’ll now hit the beach and at a point where they’re absolutely drained, and have to go through these amazingly difficult obstacles.

“To add the stand up leg to this adds probably the fastest growing ocean discipline into ironman.

“If they come up during the swimming leg now, they’ll have to go and swim an extra 60-70m around a penalty buoy which will basically destroy them so you’ll see them stop and take four or five deep breaths to make sure they can complete the whole leg underwater.”

Matt Bevilacqua will compete in the new SLS summer series.. Picture credit: Harvpix.

Porra said that the response from surf athletes had been mixed but athletes the sport has lost like stand up paddling world number one Lincoln Dews were already planning their return to surf life saving in light of the changes.

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“There’s a bunch of athletes that are judging this whole thing by how it suits them,” he said.

“Half of them love it and think it’s absolutely fantastic and there’s half that’d prefer not to do it.”