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I don’t know about you but sometimes surfing looks the same when you watch too much of it. Top turns. Cutbacks. Even airs. At a certain point, the difference in each is very, very small. For casual viewers, it’s hard to separate one “radical maneuver” from another, especially at the highest levels. Now, of course there’s the style debate, which is always good, and can absolutely distinguish one person who rides a board from another. But I’m always scouting for something that looks different. Something that, even if I’m never able to do, still makes me stop and wonder, “how?”
That’s what Ryan Parson’s style on a foil did. It made me stop my scroll in this overcrowded world of internet clips that squishes everything together at lightning-quick speed. His style seems something all-together different. In a move he’s dubbed the “Rhino Slide,” the Australian does just that – slides on the wing of his foil to do these drop-wallet laybacks that look completely unique. Now, granted, he has the use of a kite to help him keep speed. Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t be able to pull this off. But it’s certainly an ocean oddity of sorts. Something different in a sea of sameness.
Ryan is on the pro’s path of course, sponsored by several companies, paid to be attached to a kite year around. A couple of years ago, right before the pandemic, he had a video go viral that showed him jumping a rather large pier in Brisbane. He was just a teenager at the time. It sounds as if the kiting world has yet to catch up to his sliding Larry Layback maneuver: “Proudly rode for Australia and showed what the Rhino Slide was all about,” he wrote about a competition in Brazil recently. “Unfortunately the judges didn’t quite understand what I was showing but she’ll be right, haha.” Even if these “rhino slides” remain buried at the bottom of the internet heap, they certainly deserve a moment. Here’s to something different.
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