One-Handed Backflip: Best Wave Pool Air Ever?

The living skate legend dubbed Hughie’s move “The Stale Fish Flipper” and instantly gave the young surfer major kudos. This is the kind of cross-pollination Swatch Nines strives for. It's a surf, skate and BMX playground where ideas are shared, attempted and lauded. The unexpected is celebrated, and Hughie's rotation is already being hailed as arguably the best air ever done in a wave pool. Certainly, Jacob Szekely, Matt Meola and Mikey Wright could add their names to the hat, but a one-handed backflip without straps or a winch? That has to take the cake.

“(Hughie) didn’t even know what he did today,” Chippa Wilson said. “He didn’t know he just did the best air ever done in a wave pool.”

Due to the format of the event, things like Hughie’s wave can go down at any moment. In removing the constraints of competition like heats and scores, organizers created a caldron of creativity. Head to the bathroom and you’re liable to miss an air. Grab a sandwich and you won’t see the boardslide. But you’ll hear the cheers. You can watch for a while, see nothing land, but then the remarkable happens when you glance away. 

​​“It’s wild—there’s nothing else like it,” said BMX star Kevin Peraza, fresh off his recent X Games bronze medal in Tokyo. “You’ve got creativity, and a bunch of different athletes feeding off each other—it’s non-stop.”

Hughie’s air has been e most impactful move thus far, but plenty of highlights have gone down over the last two days at the second Swatch Nines Surf event: A 200-ton crane hoisting an illuminated 8-foot aluminum ring, surfers flying through (and crashing into) said ring, boardslides on floating rails, winch-whipped full rotations and a barrage of technical airs. In the last light day two, Robbie "Rasta Rob" McCormick stomped a huge backside 540 off the winch on the left, and a few minutes later, Jacob Szekely landed a lofty tail-high 360 (sans winch) with a burned finger he sustained while holding a flare on an earlier attempt. Gotta pay to play, they say. 

One of the biggest changes between last year’s inaugural event and this year’s edition is the enormous floating skate ramp and rails suspended by the crane. Surfers have three rails to choose from: a straight rail, a kink rail and an arched wallriding feature. 

And after just a few sessions, things are already clicking. Mason Ho and Zeke had several clean attempts on the left. Cam Richards, battling bruised knees and bloody shins, has also been a standout. He’s glided across the kink rail numerous times, and even rotated 360-degrees over the wallride feature, a move so sweet that Nines founder Nico Zacek ran the length of the pool to embrace him. 

If nothing else, the Nines challenge surfers. It makes them put into practice things that normally only exist in a deep, dark corner of their brains. Even for creatives and technical maestros like Mason and Chippa, who have seen and done much in their careers, Waco offers something different. 

“I’ve loved trying wallrides or any sort of boardslides in surfing,” Mason said. “I’ve loved it just because I’m a little crazy and there’s rocks or something in the way. It’s so fun to tear a wave apart, but now it’s like, I’m in the water, then out of the water. It’s all about the combo. 

“Last year, they had the rail and the hamster ball, and it was one of the funnest events I’ve been a part of," he continued. "This year is even more special and it feels like just the beginning. Last year, we used this tractor for the rail. And it was at the very end of the wave. Now, we’ve asked them to move it to the middle and gone way bigger with the crane. They’ve gone to the next level and it’s like a dream come true.”

“I’ve never done pool rails, but I did skate a lot when I was a kid,” Chippa said. “And this was the closest feeling to hitting your first rail as a kid. It’s crazy. A front boardslide feels so sick. So when I first hit this setup, I was so fired up. I almost stuck it and I just needed to go again.” 

Call it novel, experimental, random or radical. Stuff is happening at Swatch Nines.