WATCH: Seven Miraculous Surfing Recoveries

Luke Gartside

4 years ago

What are the definitive hallmarks of a surfing master?

Lightning-fast reactions? Rubber-band athleticism? A superhuman awareness that extends beyond bodily movements to include every flutter of the wave and waft of the board?

Almost certainly the answer is an exact mix of all three. Of course, we love to see these skills play out in a perfect weightless drop, precisely stomped air, or effortlessly threaded barrel, but with such well-rehearsed manoeuvres, there’s no doubt muscle memory takes much of the credit.

It’s for this reason we also enjoy it when we get a glimpse at how total mastery reacts to adversity in the moment; when a surfer is forced to adapt to a slip inside the barrel, a mid-air detachment, or a fluffed airdrop.

Today, we’ve got seven clips featuring these exact sort of mishaps and the miraculous recoveries that follow for your quarantined enjoyment:

Seb Williams at J-Bay

First up, citizen of the world Seb Williams with an unbelievable body-surf board save at J-Bay captured in 2015 (when he was just 14). Not long after, Seb got selected by Dane Reynolds and Ando as a wildcard into King Of The Groms, which he duly won. Unfortunately, a spate of injuries – including one suffered at the Red Bull Airborn – has slowed his progress in the years since, although, we’ve no doubt he’ll be one to watch again just as soon as he’s healed up.

Kelly Slater – Pipeline

It won’t come as a surprise to any surf fan that the GOAT features heavily on this list (well, twice, but that’s twice as much as anyone else). Kelly Slater is undoubtedly the surfer most-synonymous with super-human powers and several dozen re-watches of the clip below will show you exactly why. This particularly wave, dubbed the ‘Houdini tube ride’, took place at the 2018 Pipeline Masters dazzling everyone from die-hard surf fans to gossip columnists. The only people left unimpressed in fact, were the CT judges, who awarded Slater a measly 3.07 for his magical efforts. “Well, that was interesting,” he said afterwards. “I thought I just fell straight onto my belly and bodyboarded out. I didn’t realize I had to grab for it! Haha! Hope I did Mike Stewart and Mark Cunningham proud!”

Francisco Porcella – Mavericks

While Italian surfer Francisco Porcella is renowned for his composure in the face of heavy waves, this laid-back helter-skelter ride down a massive Maverick’s face sets a new bar. The ride followed a particularly nasty wipeout for Porcella, who remembers paddling back to the peak, hungry for redemption and seeing sets bowling up from deep and sneaking underneath the pack.

“People weren’t getting into them, because it was difficult to full-on commit,” he recounts to Surfer magazine. “So I swung around and straight airdropped into one. As I grabbed rail, I took a little bit of a sideways position and my fins started to redirect. My back foot slips out and my front foot slips through, and I thought, Ahhh, no no no, but then I somehow landed perfectly on my board. As I landed, I was on the inside edge of the wave, and I had speed, so I locked it in and decided to ride this thing [Laughs]. It was a perfect scenario from what started as a heavy situation to one of most fun rides ever. No one could believe it – everyone’s hooting, and I’m grinning and pointing as I’m riding down.”

Ryan Callinan- Pipeline

Back at the Banzai for the 2019 Pipe Masters, this clip features an excellent recovery from one of pro surfing’s most feline practitioners. After getting clipped on the way out of the barrel, Callinan ends up in a seated position fans of equestrian sports making liken to riding side-saddle. However, rather than ride out the whitewash like a 19th-century noblewoman, he allows the bounce to catch his flailing legs and send him into an elegant rotation, which he completes before popping back up to his feet.

Braydyn Vivian – WA

Away from the upper echelons, our next miraculous recovery stars Aussie sponge-charger Braydyn Vivian and features an unbelievable board retrieval, conducted from within the bowels of an azure drainer.⁠ If you watch carefully, you’ll see Braydn’s bodyboard go over the falls and bounce around on the foam ball, while he calmly maintains his craft-less line through the barrel. Then in the final moments, he casually plucks it from the spindrift and remounts it in time for exit. And while he may finish the ride less erect than some of our previous picks, we hope you’ll agree the stunt is no less miraculous!⁠

Griffin Colapinto – Huntington Beach

Back in the contest vest, here’s Griffin Colapinto at the US Open pioneering an outrageous fin-waft, bodysurf, darkslide combo, no doubt much to the enjoyment of the assembled bored and half-cut crowd. While it’s not the first time we’ve seen a Rodney Mullen inspired fins up surf slide (they’re surprisingly common in loggin’), it’s the first time we’ve seen one so finely utilised in a WSL sanctioned comp. After Colapinto’s pioneering efforts, perhaps 2020 was destined to be the year they became commonplace in CT events, but now because of Corona, I guess we’ll never know!

Kelly Slater – Trestles

Back with Da Goat for our final offering, this clip features perhaps the most controversial board recovery ever, which took place at the Hurley Pro Trestles in 2015. The internet kicked off so hard that Slater only got a 4.17 for this miraculous manoeuvre that the WSL dedicated a whole clip to explaining themselves. It starred a resentful sounding Richie Porta (WSL head judge), who repeated the phrase ‘incomplete manoeuvre’ a few times and told fans to grow up (at least that was the subtext).

Bonus: Andy Nieblas In Andy & Nick

Our final, bonus instalment, comes from a just-released flick, filmed and edited by Jack Coleman, featuring master of on-wave wizardry Andy Nieblas. While the recovery in question appears in the last clip of the edit, the full thing is well worth a watch, so we’ve included it for you here:

Cover photo: Francisco Porcella // Gopro