“I’m sure I’ll get tarred and feathered for this comment…”
The world’s greatest surfer, although the crown has become tarnished in recent years with one pundit even predicting he’ll never win another pro surfing heat, has taken the foilboarder Nikolas Plytas to task for what he believes was a mistake in an Instagram caption.
Nikolas Plytas is a “professional water sports athlete” although this refers to his penchant for water skiing, wing foiling, wakeboarding as well as the aforementioned foil boarding and not to the eye-raising sport of showering in gold.
Plytas, who is twenty eight or to give it some perspective Kelly Slater had already won three world titles when the little Greek baby was spat onto the linoleum of an Athens hospital, posted a short video on Instagram with the caption.
“Landed another new trick today. I would say it is a Frontside 360 backflip. How would you call it? It’s the second Worlds First trick I land within three days so I’m super exited.”
View this post on Instagram
Kelly Slater was quickly into the comment pane writing,
“I’m sure I’ll get tarred and feathered for this comment but…I get that skaters call rotation based on direction of rotation but in surfing, everything done facing the wall is and always will be considered frontside.
“The first rodeo (clowns) were done going (and called) backside rotating opposite to this. If skating is a precursor for direction of spin then should this just be called a backside mctwist and not a rodeo?
“Seems the medium you’re riding matters when distinguishing and thus the confusion we surfers suffer. Super sick though not matter what.”
Debate ensued with much earnest back and forthing about whether or not Nikolas Plytas‘ air is a rodeo 7, a backflip 360, an Air Reverse Spin (the old bodyboarding move) or a McTwist.
Reader, do you wonder about such things?
Or does a strapped-in foil board air give you shivers of disgust as if you were ordered to pluck a songbird or hull a large punnet of strawberries?
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Oh snap! The Greek Storm is upon us!
We’ve got this guy bunny hopping his samurai sword thing.
We’ve got Konstantinos Garrallapos knee boarding like a maniac.
We’ve got Georgios Antonios SUPing like a madman.
We’ve got Dimitrios Dionysios killing it on his boogie board.
The Greeks are here. Move over Brazil.
Why don’t we keep all the fancy wank off jargon out of it and use a simple gymnastic / diving description, backflip with a twist.
Look at me attitudes make me SICK
In skiing and snowboarding a cab is a front flip with a spin, a rodeo is back flip with a spin so this looks to be a rodeo 360? Not sure if the wave should be taken into context or just the trick since this trick could probably be done in a lake…
Guy is on the gram more than my wife and that is saying something.
The fact that Ke11y appears to follow this guy on Insta is the most bizarre part of the story.
yikes. talk about a non story.
True. But if Kelly farts in the woods and nobody’s there to hear it, it’s still fodder for at least one BG story.
Gross.
Air reverse.
Boogie man been doing them for decades.
Stand ups steal the tricks and rename them cause they got no respect
The trick is called, “Wasting a wave,” and it’s one many of us have already mastered.
I always wondered what it might look like to surf a pogo stick
Just another spinner in my book but Kelly is correct about how surfing maneuvers should be called with in the traditional context of if you are going front side or backside. Or else you could do a frontside backside snap and that would be dumb.
Who gives a fuck about these mutants ?
Really.
Take me back to when Kelly had hair and a foil was $25 of weed
Always tinnies here. So I’m told,
Never had to buy one.
Or something you used to smoke harder shit.
For us that was a shopping bag full of weed
leaf?
Buds! Plentiful waves and weed are our superpowers.
Pro Durban Poison?
I’m quite partial to a foil these days.
Try it. You’ll never look at shit waves the same again.
Ain’t doing it, JP.