Surfing News – This changes everything! How would you like to have up to 45 second rides on a perfect wave?
After more than a decade of operating in stealth mode Kelly Slater and his partners at the Kelly Slater Wave Co finally revealed the fruits of their labor, and the results are game-changing for the surfing world. See for yourself:
“Now that the world title has been decided and events for the year have finished, I’m excited to show you what I’ve been sitting on for the past couple of weeks. For nearly ten years, my team and I have been working on creating the first truly world-class, high-performance, human-made waves. This is something I dreamt about as a kid. Through rigorous science and technology, we’ve been able to design and build what some said was impossible, and many very understandably never thought would actually happen. I’m proud to say we took our time to get it right, and the first fully-working prototype of the wave now exists (a huge personal thank you to everyone in our lab and on our team for seeing this through!). I’ll be sharing more details in the coming weeks and months but I can’t wait any longer to share a film of my experience surfing the wave for the first time, almost two weeks ago. It was an insane day. I’m still a little in disbelief, and trying to process how much fun this wave is, but it certainly feels like this is going to change a lot of perceptions about human-made waves. There’s a direct link in my bio to kswaveco.com to view the short film. Can’t wait to see other people surf it soon and show what is possible on this thing. #KSWaveCo #FreakOfTechnology #LooksLikeSuperbank but #NotCrowded!
The video surpassed 250,000 views on the company’s Facebook page within the first hour.
What’s so incredible about this wave? In a word: everything. Its power, shape, and face quality. Slater is repeatedly setting up shop in its hollow tube, and staying put for extended periods of time. The rides at their secret test facility (110 miles from the coast) are 45 seconds long.
The ramifications of this reveal are immeasurable at this point, but certainly will change the face of surfing as we know it. Much more to come on this…stay tuned.
By Chris Mauro, World Surf League
