The sport of Bodyboarding started in Hawaii in 1971, thanks to surfing legend Tom Morey. From its humble beginnings, Bodyboarding has grown into a truly global action sport.
The first major professional competition was held at the Banzai Pipeline in Hawaii in 1983. Over the years, the Pipeline competition evolved into what became known as the World Bodyboard Championships and the top athletes from around the world would converge on the North Shore of Oahu to compete for the title of the world’s best Bodyboarder.
In 1988 competitors and officials began collectively writing a set of competition rules that all countries could follow with the hope of forming a world circuit to determine the World Champion. After 4 years, a set of worldwide competition rules was finally approved.
The next task was to set up a world tour. In 1994 the Global Organisation of Bodyboarding (GOB) was launched with the beginning of the inaugural World Tour. In 1995 the GOB had 8 events ending with the World Bodyboarding Championships at Pipeline.
In 1996 the GOB added women Bodyboarders to the tour with outstanding results. The combined tour sanctioned 18 events with $335,000 in total prize money.
In 2004 the GOB was renamed the International Bodyboard Association (IBA). This re-branded the sport with a new identity and globalised the IBA chapters worldwide. Since then the sport has tripled in prize money and new events are constantly sprouting up across the globe.
In 2010 the IBA was corporatized by the current Managing Director, Gregg Taylor. The men’s World Tour was separated into the Grand Slam Series (GSS) and the Global Qualifying Series (GQS) with the objective of creating an elite tour of the best riders in the most extreme wave locations on the planet.
Today, the IBA GSS is the sole professional World Tour for Bodyboarding, with the best riders and events all managed under the one corporate entity. The IBA produces and controls all elements of the World Tour from the events, the Tour, the media coverage and the athletes. The reach of the IBA also extends into the grassroots and national tours of all the IBA regions around the globe.