At the time of writing it is exactly t-minus 8 mins since Kelly’s latest wavepool teaser dropped on his social media channels. I feel we should talk about it in sciencey-type terms since it is still all a bit of a mystery, or a #FreakOfTechnology as Kelly likes to put it.
The teaser features Nat Young, Carrisa Moore, Kanoa Igarashi, some old long boarder (Wingnut!), and of course the iconic bald man himself.
Wrote Kelly on his Facebook:
This thing has got my mind boggled. Thanks to each of you for your feedback and helping us test the wave and improve our technology. Everyone’s approach blew my mind and the smiles said it all. This is #TheBestToyInTheWorld.
Stephanie Gilmore and Josh Kerr are here with me today and a couple other friends might make an entrance. Just starting to post some edits and show you guys what we’ve got in store for everybody. Stay tuned for more in the coming days. Thanks to everyone on my team for even making this possible. And keep in mind … this is version 1.0. I can only imagine where we are going with future versions.
Kelly parks himself casually in the tube like it ain’t no thang. It’s almost as if he’s spent hours nailing it by himself before he invited his friends over to give them a damn good thrashing.
To be fair, Nat Young seems to pick it up pretty quickly and gets barrelled off his tits, albeit twitchily. Igarashi looks on, grinning like he’s in an advert for a new sitcom. He also appears to need a full wetsuit when Kelly is in boardshorts. I suppose his shoulders get cold easily.
Carissa is resplendent in her standard tangerine garb as well. She does get barreled. But not quite like Nat or Kanoa. Or Kelly, obviously.
The wave still looks tasty the second time around, but I’m not convinced that watching someone crouch in a barrel stance for 20 secs won’t be deathly boring after you’ve seen it twice. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that competitions held in this wave pool will be much more interesting if they fill the pool with sharks and crocs and make holding your barrel stance a life or death situation. I think that would be good.
And is it just me, or does it look a little, eh, difficult? If the lovely Carissa is struggling to get deep enough I’m not sure the rest of us should be too hopeful.
I’m sure Kelly is holding back for a proper clip, and I’m sure Carissa did get a few good ones. (See the clips below) Luckily she and the team seemed to make full use of the jetski assist; the paddle must be a bloody nightmare.
Here are a few more clips. Nat Young said he got the longest barrel of his life.
And Carissa is frothing.
Kanoa is happy.
We’ll accept our testing invite any time. You can even fill it with sharks.
