Yeah, that’s real life. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Andre Botha knows how to get himself under the hood. Pipeline has some of the best hoods on the planet to be under, so it makes sense that he loves that particular wave. Botha, who mostly rides bodyboards, is very, very familiar with Pipeline, but Pipeline never ceases to amaze.
Botha has a whole pile of bodyboarding awards, winning his first world title at the age of 17. His second came the year after, and he’s got a Pipeline World Championship trophy on the mantel, too. He’s also a guy to rely on when things go sideways, as Evan Geiselman found out in December of 2018.
He’s in his early 40s now, and he’s ridden a million waves at Pipeline, but Pipeline, as I mentioned, isn’t like a wave pool that pumps out identical wave after identical wave. The sand changes on the reef. The swell direction switches up. A million different factors make for a very unpredictable phenomenon, and those factors came together on Botha’s wave to create a crazy backwash fountain that he had backstage passes to see.
