Leonardo Fioravanti recently surfed the Alaia Bay artificial wave and logged some air time. “I finally landed my first backflip at Alaia Bay during an intense air training session!” wrote Fioravanti in the caption of his latest YouTube video. “Wavegarden has created an amazing air section to practice on and I loved spending hours in this perfect artificial wave to perfect my air game.”
However, as is inevitably the case with any sort of progressive surfing, there was some debate as to what to actually call the trick Leonardo pulled off. Out of the many, many times Leo took to the air in the training session, it looks like the “backflip” he’s referring to would be at the 5:25 mark in the video. Though the move is inarguably impressive, some commenters chimed in to deny Leonardo had performed a true backflip, instead calling it a “tweaked air reverse” or a “corked 360.”
So, does Leonardo get to check backflips off of his bucket list? If the move wasn’t in fact a flip, then what was it? Let us know in the comments.
