After nearly a decade of working to perfect their creation, Kelly Slater and the Kelly Slater Wave Co have unveiled a man-made wave that they say will be a game-changer for the surfing world.
Slater shared a video of the wave this morning, and apparently has been taking 45-second rides on it at his secret test facility. He and the team claim that it is superior both in power and shape, and it could change the face of surfing forever.
In an accompanying Facebook post, Slater wrote:
Now that the world title has been decided and events for the year have finished, I’m excited to show you what I’ve been sitting on for the past couple of weeks. For nearly ten years, my team and I have been working on creating the first truly world-class, high-performance, human-made waves. This is something I dreamt about as a kid. Through rigorous science and technology, we’ve been able to design and build what some said was impossible, and many very understandably never thought would actually happen. I’m proud to say we took our time to get it right, and the first fully-working prototype of the wave now exists (a huge personal thank you to everyone in our lab and on our team for seeing this through!). I’ll be sharing more details in the coming weeks and months but I can’t wait any longer to share a film of my experience surfing the wave for the first time, almost two weeks ago. It was an insane day. I’m still a little in disbelief, and trying to process how much fun this wave is, but it certainly feels like this is going to change a lot of perceptions about human-made waves … Can’t wait to see other people surf it soon and show what is possible on this thing. #KSWaveCo #FreakOfTechnology #LooksLikeSuperbank but #NotCrowded! Kelly Slater Wave Company
Story: World Surf League
Image: Facebook
