Top 10 Videos of 2022 Countdown – #7 A Nias High Five

A peak behind the curtain of your most treasured surfing slices from the year just gone.   

On our Instagram account, we’ve been doing a countdown of the 25 most-watched clips of 2022. For the top 10, which will get us to the dying embers of the year, we thought we’d dig a little deeper into the videos themselves.

It’s a peak behind the curtain on just why these slivers of surfing from 2022 proved so popular with the Wavelength faithful. You’re a strange bunch, sure, but you know your surfing, and you know what you like. And that’s what we love about ya.

No. 7: A Sumatran Slap aka The Spirit of Surfing

“People made it controversial, about the high five,” Kelly Slater once said about the notorious slap of hands with his friend, and World Title rival Rob Machado at the 1995 Pipeline Masters. “I think it’s disrespectful, and I think it’s kind of a slap in the face to the spirit of surfing, to be honest. We were stoked. Two friends surfing with perfect waves at Pipeline with no one out. Ya, there’s a world title on the line, but perfect waves, and I think we were just in the moment.”

So high fives have history in surfing. In this drone clip of a wave at Nias, it is the simple gesture that made this wave so popular on our socials. Sure, the wave is perfect. However, the high five at the end ices the cake. It shows the joy and camaraderie of two surfers enjoying a very special moment. Kelly would approve. This is as good as surfing gets. This is the spirit of surfing.