Why Surf Life Saving Produces Unmatched Elite Athletes

Most people have never heard of surf life saving.

But if you speak to performance coaches, paddlers or Olympic programmes, they will tell you the same thing: this is one of sport’s most powerful foundations. It is where athletes learn to move well, read the ocean, stay calm under pressure and develop physical literacy across several disciplines long before they specialise.

Surf life saving does not just create competitors. It creates multi-athletes. To understand how versatile the sport really is, here is a short list of elite athletes who started sport at a surf life saving club:

●  Dame Lisa Carrington, triple Olympic gold medallist in canoe sprint, who credits her formative years at Whakatane Surf Life Saving Club in New Zealand for the ocean skills and confidence that shaped her career.

●  Lani Pallister, four time short course swimming world champion, who began as a world class lifesaving athlete and still holds youth world records in the sport.

●  Phil Clayton, former professional Ironman, known for dominating the Kellogg’s Nutri Grain series before rising to global success.

●  Ky Hurst, Olympic marathon swimmer and Ironman legend, who first learned the rhythms of surf racing long before lining up at the Games.

Different outcomes, different paths, but the same beginning: a sport built on resilience, timing and versatility.

For Welsh athlete Drew Howells, that pathway feels personal.

A Sport That Builds Athletes, Not Specialists

Drew racing at an Ocean Ski Race in Great Britain

Drew began surf life saving at six years old, moving through nippers, juniors and ski work. Once he earned his ski competency, his sporting world expanded. Technique sessions in Woolacombe, with Marl Resell, led him to Cardiff’s ski group, which introduced him to sprint kayaking just before COVID. He is now part of the Welsh Sprint Performance Squad, developing his paddling skills and speed with Welsh Coach Matt Robinson.  

For him, variety is the sport’s greatest strength:

“Life saving as a whole is one of those sports where no athlete is the same.”

You see this across the starting line. Some athletes excel in beach sprints, others in ski, board, swimming or Ironman. This diversity shaped Drew’s confidence to try everything. He soon discovered ocean ski, a discipline of 10 to 30 kilometre sea races built on wave reading, navigation and smart decision-making. The unpredictability hooked him.

“Ocean racing is quite a unique sport,” he says. “The race varies. One minute, you start with many competitors. Next, you’re battling against the waves, in the ocean, without another paddler in sight.” 

Since his first sessions in Woolacombe, Drew has become an elite all-rounded paddle athlete, with a long list of successes. He won the British Open Ski Champion in 2024, represented Wales in surf life saving with two senior caps, travelled cross-continentally around Europe and Australia representing GB in Ocean Ski racing and he is currently training in the Welsh performance sprint squad. Drew’s list of paddling achievements, across different disciplines, showcases the versatility of his skill but also highlight the many paths that surf life saving can take you.

“Surf life saving gives people an opportunity to find what they would like to do.”

The Ocean Teaches What Flatwater Cannot

Unlike most sports, no surf life saving race is ever the same. Conditions change constantly. Beaches differ. Swell, tide and wind turn a simple course into a tactical challenge.

This unpredictability builds athletes who adapt fast. Sprint kayaking offers structure and lanes. Ocean racing adds navigation and risk. Surf ski requires surf timing and handling. Each discipline sharpens the others.

Drew receiving his Western Australia U19 Single Ski medal

Drew developed these skills further during six months in Western Australia, at Trigg Island SLSC, training with some of the most experienced athletes that Western Australia has to offer with world class paddlers, such as Ceris Humble and Dan Humble. Australia is renowned for its surf life saving reputation, offering one of the world’s most competitive ocean paddling environments. A paddler’s dream and the home of surf life saving. Training in heavy wind chop and racing against elite athletes quickly taught Drew to read conditions, stay composed and handle bigger surf. Australia was a great environment for Drew to understand the sport’s global standard. He competed in the Western Australian Championships, bringing back the U19 Western Australia single ski title to Wales. 

“I do not think any sport comes close to it,” he says. “Athletes need to have many skills, in so many different sports, but that is what makes it so exciting.” 

The Multi-Sport Athlete of the Future

Sport is shifting. Modern athletes are now expected to be adaptable, technically skilled and comfortable across different formats. Hybrid competitions like Hyrox and CrossFit celebrate all rounders who can lift, run, row and sprint in a single event.

Surf life saving has been ahead of this trend for decades. Its start lines have always been inclusive, mixing ages, genders and levels of experience.

As Drew notes:

“There is probably not a sport like it where you have that much experience and variation within a start line.”

This approach now appears on the world stage. Mixed gender formats are embedded in the Olympics, from the 4x400 metre mixed relay to swimming’s mixed medley relay and the new mixed K2 event in sprint kayaking. Life saving did not adapt to this shift - it helped shape it.

Athletes from this sport appear everywhere, in Olympic lanes, ocean races, swimming pools and endurance events. Drew Howells is one of them.  And he will not be the last.

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At Great Sport, we believe greatness is not always seen on the biggest stages.

It lives in stories like Drew’s, where sport can move, change and grow into something unexpectedly great. 

If you have any stories, like Drew’s, that you’d like to share, reach out to Great Sport. 

Drew racing at Eurochallenge in Villajoyosa, Spain