A melding of sports made possible thanks to a controlled environment
“For a long time I’ve had the idea of trying to combine the skatepark with the ocean,” Julian Wilson says, in this new mini-doc from Red Bull. “To take something I have so much fun with, like a skateboard, and apply that to my profession as a surfer…that’s gonna challenge me.”
For years Wilson attempted to boardslide a rail on a surfboard in the ocean, but with no luck. There were simply too many variables, and so he had basically given up. Until URBNSURF opened its doors in Melbourne.
With a wave pool, Wilson saw a new and exciting opportunity. Until he actually tried. As he found out the hard way (he nearly gets decapitated by the rail), combining surf and skate is no easy task, even in an artificial and controlled environment. “As much as I thought there would so much we could control in the pool, there ended up being so many challenges…again.”
Still, after hours of trial and error, Wilson eventually nails what he came for: The first successful frontside boardslide on a surfboard. Is this the future, or just a novelty experiment? Like everything in the wave pool world, only time will tell.
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