An accident or a pointed message. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
The drop in is one of surfing’s most vile transgressions. It can be used in jest, of course, when two friends burn each other on the wave of the day (looking at you, Juan), and certainly can be the beginning of a party wave if the burnee is in a good mood, but more often it’s simply done by accident. In the case of the bodyboarder and the surfer seen here at Backdoor, it doesn’t look to be the latter.
If you watch closely at the 33-second mark in this clip from Off Da Lip, the burner very clearly looks over and sees the surfer, then decides to go anyway. While it’s impossible to know what was going through his head, there are a few options: first, maybe he thought the surfer wasn’t going to backdoor the wave or make it at all. Second, maybe he’d been burned one too many times by the surfer and was implementing a retaliatory tactic. And third, maybe he’s just kind of selfish.
With any luck, it was just an accident. Accidents happen, after all, and that’ll never change. In this case, neither the surfer nor the bodyboarder were hurt, and hopefully nothing except a word or two was exchanged.
