A barrel-to-alley-oop combo might just be the most complete ride. Ever.
A couple of months back we lost our minds over Kelly’s rote-and-a-half in Portugal.
Mental? Yes it was.
But while all eyes and commentary were on Kelly’s move, something easy to get your head around (High! Spin!), a few hours earlier, Kolohe had completed what the 2001 world champ CJ Hobgood is calling the “best wave ever ridden.”
On IG this morn, he wrote:
Yes @kellyslater ‘s 720 a few miles down the road and hours later was better and Yes there’s been heavier, deeper barrels ridden.HOWEVER if getting a barrel in surfing is the ultimate experience and next in line would be an air. I have never seen a better barrel and bigger air combo on the same wave. My answer is yes and what wave is next in line for best combo if this is número uno?
An opinion! Who has opinions these days! BeachGrit called CJ in Orlando, Florida, where he was recovering from nerve surgery in his arm, to get a little elaboration.
And CJ, still only 35 (a year younger than Taj, seven under Kelly), and who’ll probs get the injury wildcard for 2015 if he wants it, ain’t afraid to jam.
“I’ve been racking my brain and I can’t think of another combo as good,” he says of a barrel-to-alley-oop combo that features on the cover of the latest issue of Surfing magazine.
“People have said there’s been a couple of Dane combos but that’s it.”
CJ says that there had been plenty of chatter about raising the performance bar prior to Kolohe’s combo. Like, what would happen if John John or Julian had wrapped up their soaring alley-oops with something else, a combo like nothing else ever seen?
After the photographer Ryan Miller caught the wave on stills and …Lost filmer Noah Alani (angle one) and Blake Kueny (angle two) had it safe on a RED cam, there were round-table discussions between photographers, surfers and journalists.
Like, how good is that wave?
“I think it’s the gnarliest wave ever ridden,” says CJ. “I didn’t see people comprehending the magnitude of what went down. On Instagram, I wanted to shine some light on the sheer magnitude of what I thought went down.”
If a barrel-to-oop is the best wave in history, what next? Three hammers?
“It’d be hard to get your brain into another manoeuvre after two,” says CJ. “You could tell that when Brother was done his brain was… warped. It was wow… and wow. You have to contain a high level of focus for that level of time and not be stoked with what you’ve already pulled. You’d have to prepare your brain for sure.”
CJ adds, “It was a watershed moment for surfing.”
Kolohe’ll be releasing a 25-minute film next July and it’ll have the two angles of the wave. Can you wait?