Who invented the Mexican Wave?
As usual, I was up surfing on the net when I came across the above-titled piece by the BBC’s Finlo Rohrer and I thought I’d share with y’all. Hope it answers some curious questions of yours and do enjoy.
The World Cup has seen its fair share of Mexican Waves, but where did this crowd phenomenon start and how do you actually start one?
The Mexican wave
Perhaps the strangest thing about sitting in a stadium with a 90,000 capacity is how a crowd the equivalent of a small city can occasionally act in unison. The Mexican Wave is one such occasion. You look to your right and see the wave approaching, accompanied by a crescendo. When it hits you, you jump up and throw your hands in the air, making whatever noise you feel apposite. You have taken your part in the wave, and so it continues.
The only variation in the routine is if the wave hits some sort of VIP box, and breaks down as the dignitaries refuse to take part. Booing usually follows and the wave may restart on the far side of the VIPs. This pattern is repeated in stadiums for different sports across the world.
But where did this pattern start?
The first thing is that there is a dearth of evidence that the Mexican Wave originated in Mexico. There is indeed far more evidence that it started in the United States, where it is simply known as The Wave. Digging into wave history, the names of two claimants
Krazy George claims to have invented the Mexican wave
come up again and again. The first is a professional cheerleader “Krazy” George Henderson, who says he gave the wave its first mainstream outing on 15 October 1981 at a major league baseball clash between the Oakland A’s and the New York Yankees.
“The Oakland A’s had already lost two games away. In the third inning I thought I would try this thing that no-one had seen before. I found three sections and started explaining what I wanted.”
When the first couple of wave attempts broke down, Krazy George encouraged the most enthusiastic sections of the crowd to engage in a chorus of boos. By the third attempt the wave had gone around the whole stadium, by the fourth he had managed a continuous wave. “The place was going nuts”, Krazy George notes.
The other main claimant is Robb Weller, who led the wave at the University of Washington’s Husky Stadium in Seattle on 31 October 1981. That that was two weeks after Krazy George’s debut does not stop the claim. “Robb Weller had returned that day and was reprising what he had done as cheerleader here [much earlier],” explains Jeff Bechthold, director of athletic communications at the University of Washington.
How does Krazy George take the suggestion that it wasn’t he who started the wave?
“I was doing it in smaller venues before [1981],” he says. “I had already done it in high school games and minor league hockey games.” There are other claimants. Suggestions it started in Mexico in the 1960s, in Canada during the 1970s or at the Indy 500 road race in 1973. The latter claim, at least, can be disproved. Donald Davidson, historian of the Indy 500, was there and would have remembered it.
What is not in dispute is that it got a large measure of publicity at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics before really taking off at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico and thus being cemented in football fans’ minds as the Mexican Wave.
The wave has even been the subject of a scientific study. In 2002 when Tamas Vicsek, at the Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary, led a group of wave researchers. He noticed two things about what might seem to some to be an example of simultaneous crowd spontaneity. The first is that it can be triggered by as few as 25 people acting in concert.
“This is provided by people who try to trigger the wave, they know each other and they synchronise their jumping up,” he says. “We noted if the game is too exciting on its own, and they are watching the game a lot, then there would be no wave usually. It has to be initiated, it never spontaneously occurs.” The second point is that the waves, in the northern hemisphere at least, go clockwise.
Author Gavin Pretor-Pinney, author of The Wavewatcher’s Companion, is currently running an experiment to attempt to prove the assertion that in the southern hemisphere they go counter-clockwise. He’s not totally sure what the reason could be. “It might be something to do with the side of the road people drive on.”
But it doesn’t need a scientist to realise that the Mexican Wave is done to relieve boredom.
If England are 1-1 with Spain in the last minutes of the World Cup final, there will be no wave. If they are 5-0 up in a friendly against Azerbaijan, it’s wave time. Many feel the wave might be a bit hackneyed these days.
Prince William and others can't resist the wave
“The Mexican Wave is a little bit old hat,” says Chris Hunt, author of World Cup Stories and The Compact Book Of The World Cup. “I think when a game is flagging and nothing is really happening on the pitch, fans these days feel it’s a way to get value for money out of their expensively purchased match tickets.”
Even the wave inventors may be bored by it. Krazy George rarely does it anymore, and it’s even rarer at the University of Washington, says Mr Bechtold. “They haven’t done it for years.”
