Shockwaves as top female surfer nominates Brazilian wave pool “world’s best” over Kelly Slater tank in Abu Dhabi

Boa Vista, says Lakey, is "undoubtedly the best wave pool in the world"

One of the more enjoyable vlogs from pro surfers is the regular instalments gifted by the number seven surfer, philanthropist and motivational speaker Lakey Peterson. 

Her YouTube channel dates from 2010 and the vlogs have been getting dropped for since 2019. Lakey Peterson has been a force, as they say, in surfing ever since she started starting winning everything aged twelve and up, a legacy, maybe, of a mama that was was once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest spring swimmer. 

Mama’s story is a wild one. 

Between 1978 and 1980 Sue Hinderaker held the American record in the 50-yard freestyle, a short-course event swum in a 25-yard pool, standard for NCAA competitions. This record-setting performance clocked her at a speed of 4.42 miles per hour, earning her a spot in the 1980 Guinness Book of World Records as the “fastest female swimmer” for that distance and pool length.

Her swimming career didn’t translate to Olympic gold, howevs. The 50-meter freestyle, her strongest event, wasn’t part of the Olympic program in 1976, 1980, or 1984—it debuted in 1988 at Seoul. 

In 1980, the U.S. boycotted the Moscow Olympics over the Commies invading Afghanistan, canceling the Olympic Trials. Although USA Swimming held a national championships meet afterward to name a symbolic Olympic team, Sue, who had placed seventh in the 100-meter freestyle at the 1976 Olympic Trials, said to hell with this, opted out and traveled to Hawaii instead. 

Two years later, she was married to Dave Peterson, whose daddy Herb Peterson, a McDonalds franchisee and later exec invented the McDonald’s Egg McMuffin, and a dozen years later birthed Lakey. 

Fascinating, eh?

A little earlier today, Lakey catalogued her visit to the Boa Vista wavepool in Saul Paulo, Brazil, easily the best of the genre. You’ll remember when sixty-year-old bodyboarding god Mike Stewart stole the show from world champs Italo Ferreira and Carissa Moore there with his arabesques, fouettés, picqué tours and port de bras inside the long tubes.

In her latest episode, Lakey Peterson travels from the Abu Dhabi pool to Brazil where she has a marathon eight-hour session to refine her airs and to shave off the burrs in her turns.

Boa Vista, which cost over three hundred million dollars, is “undoubtedly the best wave pool in the world”, says Lakey, hurling sand, metaphorically, at the Abu Dhabi Kelly Slater tank.

Like Abu Dhabi, howevs, it ain’t a place for the poor.

Starting at one million dollars, well-heeled surfers must buy their way in via apartments and villas built around the tank and then sling another one hundred gees a year for surfing access.