Newquay rides on the wave of Britain's largest surfing event

Rumours of a great white shark stalking the waters off the south-west coast were all but a distant memory this week in Cornwall as Britain's largest annual surf competition returned to Newquay.

Up to 300,000 people are expected to attend the Rip Curl Boardmasters festival which attracts some of the biggest stars of the surfing, skateboarding, wakeboarding, and BMX world to the town's Fistral Beach for nine days of sporting competitions, gigs and suitably hedonistic revelry.

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A total of 170 professional surfers, including 10 of the world's top 40 exponents from the World Championship Tour, are competing in this year's event, which began on Monday and will culminate in the men's competition, a five-star event with a £100,000 cash prize. It is one of the major surf competitions of the year.

Some of the surfing world's most accomplished stars are expected to compete in the tournament, including the current world number 10 Kai Otton, the Brazilian pro surfer Adriano de Souza a rising Australian star Ben Dunn, who is tipped by many to be the surfing world's next Kelly Slater, a man regarded as one of the greatest competition surfers of all time.

On the beachside, meanwhile, skateboarders will battle it out on a 12ft ramp for a separate £20,000 cash prize. The French pro Terence Bougdour has won the competition for the past three years and is expected to draw large crowds as he defends his title.

The annual festival at Newquay has grown year on year, from a little known surf competition to a world-class event and the highlight of the British surfing calendar. The sport now brings in more than £200m a year to the UK and an estimated £42m for Cornwall alone.

According to David Foster from the British Surfing Association, it is the consistency of the wave that makes Newquay the venue of choice for most of Britain's surfers.

"It's true that you do get better waves in other parts of the country," he said, "but the warm weather conditions and regular swells at Newquay make it the best place to hold an international competition. It's never guaranteed but you generally have a 50:50 chance of catching a good wave down there."

Anyone arriving in Newquay to surf will soon hear of the legendary Cribbar, a 30ft wave that, under the right conditions, begins over a reef off Fistral Beach and can rival anything Hawaii, the traditional birthplace of surfing, has to offer.

The competition in Newquay, complete with its plethora of corporate sponsors, is a far cry from the town's early origins as the low-key birthplace of Britain's small but dogged surfing scene. Local legend has it that British surfing was born in Newquay shortly before the Second World War when Pip Staffieri, a local ice-cream maker of Italian origin and his friend Jimmy Dix wrote to the Hawaiian surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku, asking him how to make a board after becoming frustrated with their own attempts.

One year later, just as the two friends were beginning to think the letter had been lost, a large parcel arrived for them. Inside was a surfboard sent by Duke Kahanamoku and a note that read: "From the surfers of Hawaii, to the people of Great Britain."

According to Alex Dick-Read, the founding editor of the surfing magazine Surfers Path, it was only after the war that the sport really began to take off, particularly when local surfer Bill Bailey opened the country's first surfboard shop.

"Some time in the late Fifties it was decided Newquay beach should have lifeguards because the area was becoming increasingly popular with tourists," he said. "To begin with, a lot of the lifeguards were Australian or American and I've heard there was even a Hawaiian. They started surfing and that caught the attention of Bill Bailey. The rest is history."

Newquay is regarded as Britain's surfing Mecca but many say the August waves are disappointing. "People often think surfing is a summer sport but really the best surf in the UK tends to be found in autumn, winter and spring when you get huge storms and great waves," said Mr Dick-Read.