IMAGINE a group of Sunday ramblers invited to ascend Everest, and you will begin to understand how three unfit Cornishmen feel.

The trio will travel to Hawaii in January to pit themselves against 50 super-fit hunks in the annual Pipeline Bodysurfing Championships, a world-class contest in the sport of wave riding. What started as a joke has suddenly got out of hand.

They will be the only English team in the contest, but are buoyed by their belief that they will enter the pantheon of heroic sporting failures to join Britain’s most famous ski-jumper, Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards and the Jamaican bobsleigh team.

Bodysurfing is surfing without a surfboard and is regarded as the purest form of the sport. It is said to have been invented centuries ago by native Hawaiians who watched with envy the offshore play of dolphins.

Ten years ago a group of British surfers, with tongue firmly in cheek, started a British bodysurfing contest at Trevaunance Cove on the north coast of Cornwall. They became quite good at it, in the way that Equatorial Guinea became quite good at football; the will was there, but not the challenge.

A 5ft swell at Trevaunance is regarded as heavy; at Pipeline, where northeasterlies drive the sea over a reef, they barely bother to pull on the Speedos until the waves hit 30ft.

Tim Bawden, 37, a pub landlord from St Agnes, is this year’s Cornish champion. His team-mates Mark Craze, 38, and Andrew Whitworth, 39, also from St Agnes, are previous winners at Trevaunance.

Although the Hawaiian contest is not until January 26, the trio are already in training, claiming they are eating Hawaiian pizzas, switching to low-tar cigarettes and putting a dash of lemonade in their pints.

“Joking aside, we are still going to have to contend with some big waves, but when we get there we will certainly do our best,” Mr Bawden said yesterday.

“We found out about this world championship, which is a big event in Hawaii and is taken quite seriously out there. We looked into it, made some phone calls and managed to get ourselves into the competition. There hasn’t been a British team before.”

They expect to be up against Kelly Slater, six-times world surfing champion, in the “one person, one wave” contest.

Competitors may not use a standard surfboard, but they are allowed a small handheld board, and flippers on their feet, to enable them to steer. Promotional material for Pipeline says: “It’s always crowded, always intense and always dangerous. So serious surfers only, and give the locals respect.”

In the native Hawaiian language bodysurfing is known as kaha nalu. Cornish contestants may in future be known by the phrase fish out of water.

RIDING THE WAVE

Paul Redfern, from Australia, said he survived the Boxing Day tsunami by bodysurfing a wave until he reached a road

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