"How mainstream can surfing be before losing its soul?"

Guardian '"I haven't been in the water for a week," smiles 26-year-old Ori Matas, wrapped in a black wetsuit, as he shivers past me to the car park above. "I was hungry."' by Patrick Kingsley

'In the summer, surfers stuff Newquay in Cornwall, the capital of Britain's wave-catching community. Today, the first Tuesday of the new year, it is empty. Only hardcore surfers such as Matas have stayed to brave the chill. With surfwear long absorbed into conventional high-street fashion, and surfer slang indistinguishable from mainstream diction, diehards such as him remind us that the sport is, at its extreme, a wonderful eccentricity.

'But for how much longer? Starting this year, professional surfers are to be drugs-tested before major competitions, thanks to regulations announced in November by the sport's governing body, the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP). For some, this move sounds the death-knell for a pastime that, according to cliche, has long been associated with the underground.

'"Part of its appeal is that it is counter-cultural, marginal and in some way subversive and that's where the association with drugs comes in, whether real or mythic," Andy Martin, author of surf book Stealing the Wave, told the Guardian recently. "But the commercial imperatives require [surfers] to be straight. How mainstream can surfing be before losing its soul?"'