We’ve all been to water parks and swam in those giant wave pools. They’re fun, but nothing like the real thing. If you’re a surfer, and you can’t practice in the actual ocean, you need a good approximation of what you’ll be facing during competition.
Surfing legend Kelly Slater went ahead and created a wave pool that might actually be a decent representation of the ocean.
Here’s how he explained it on Instagram:
“Now that the world title has been decided and events for the year have finished, I’m excited to show you what I’ve been sitting on for the past couple of weeks. For nearly ten years, my team and I have been working on creating the first truly world-class, high-performance, human-made waves. This is something I dreamt about as a kid. Through rigorous science and technology, we’ve been able to design and build what some said was impossible, and many very understandably never thought would actually happen. I’m proud to say we took our time to get it right, and the first fully-working prototype of the wave now exists (a huge personal thank you to everyone in our lab and on our team for seeing this through!). I’ll be sharing more details in the coming weeks and months but I can’t wait any longer to share a film of my experience surfing the wave for the first time, almost two weeks ago. It was an insane day. I’m still a little in disbelief, and trying to process how much fun this wave is, but it certainly feels like this is going to change a lot of perceptions about human-made waves. There’s a direct link in my bio to kswaveco.com to view the short film. Can’t wait to see other people surf it soon and show what is possible on this thing. #KSWaveCo #FreakOfTechnology #LooksLikeSuperbank but #NotCrowded!”
Watching the video, you’d have no idea that the waves he’s riding are man-made, not mother-nature made. And in case you were wondering whether the success of the wave pool was a one time thing…
Water park wave pools are forever ruined. And to quote the theme song to “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” “science rules.”
