We Have Liftoff

By Jim Benning
Outside Magazine

SINCE THE dawn of the shortboard, surfers have launched themselves off waves–inspiring later generations of skateboarders and snowboarders to violate a little airspace of their own. And while waveriders eventually went the way of scale–pursuing ever-bigger, meaner, gut-wrenching faces–the landlocked Young Turks perfected style, in the form of spectator-friendly (and, conveniently, sponsor-friendly) acrobatics. It was only a matter of time before the circle closed.

“People want to see blood and guts, and surfers are really going for it,” says professional surfer Jason “Ratboy” Collins, 26, a leading proponent of “progressive surfing” –a mutant derivative of the sport in which riders take off the lips of waves, pull flips, and attempt action-packed, generally whacked-out maneuvers straight from the half-pipe songbook. “It’s pretty cool to watch.”

Indeed. At Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz and Rocky Point in Hawaii, among other breaks, progressive surfers are now launching as high as eight feet (no kite strings attached), pulling airs, alley-oops, and extraordinarily difficult rodeo flips. Surfers debate when this new school took hold — some credit a mid-1990s Kelly Slater — but most agree that only recently has progressive surfing really taken on a life of its own. After years of complaints from pro surfers, the Association of Surfing Professionals, the sport’s rulemaking body, voted last year to tweak its traditional judging criteria to reward more cutting-edge maneuvers. The now five-year-running “Airshow” tour will spotlight the sickest moves at Southern California’s Salt Creek, April 18 to 22. “Surfing is one of those cool things that keeps evolving,” explains ASP board member Ian Cairns. “It’s the continuum of change.”

Photo by Lanpernas 2.0 via Flickr, (Creative Commons).