Flowstate deployed its newly launched surfing foundation model during the Swellbeing Surfathon, a 12-hour surf marathon between world record holder Blakey Johnston and Red Bull athlete and Olympic snowboarder Val Guselli at URBNSURF Sydney.
The event took place from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at URBNSURF Sydney’s Olympic Park wave pool. Throughout the event, Flowstate’s AI model tracked, scored and logged every wave, turn and barrel ridden by both athletes. The company said the event was the first public use of the model since its launch.
The surfing foundation model was announced by Flowstate earlier this month as an AI system designed to understand a wave ride from start to finish. According to the company, capabilities include automated competition scoring, AI gamification and progression tracking.
“This is exactly the kind of moment the model was built for,” said Luke Wallace, Founder & CEO of Flowstate. “Twelve hours, thousands of waves, two athletes pushing through fatigue and cold water, and the model didn’t need a single human to tell it what happened. It watched every wave, understood it in context, and scored it against everything else it’s ever seen. That’s the foundation model working exactly as designed, and URBNSURF Sydney gave us the perfect stage to prove it.”
During the event, the model generated a live statistical feed that included sessions surfed, waves ridden, turns landed, barrels completed, time spent riding waves and leaderboard positions. The system also operated three gamification formats: Barrel Hunter, Everyday Hero and Wipeout Roulette.
Flowstate said the results required no manual review or venue-specific configuration and were generated using the same model architecture trained on 20 million waves across five wave-making technologies.
Both athletes completed 12 sessions and rode 134 waves each at the Sydney surf park. Johnston recorded 807 turns compared with 635 for Guselli. Johnston logged 24 barrels and 59 seconds of total barrel time, while Guselli logged 21 barrels and 37 seconds of barrel time. Johnston accumulated 36 minutes and 18 seconds of total ride time, compared with 32 minutes and 32 seconds for Guselli.
The event also marked the first public deployment of Flowstate’s manoeuvre scoring engine, which the company said was trained on World Surf League and US Board Riders competition footage. Johnston’s highest-scoring wave received a score of 10.0, while Guselli’s highest-scoring wave received a 9.10. Average wave scores were 7.40 for Johnston and 6.80 for Guselli.
In the Barrel Hunter game mode, Johnston scored 2,611 points compared with 1,793 for Guselli. In Everyday Hero, Johnston recorded 7,722 points and Guselli recorded 6,609. In Wipeout Roulette, Guselli scored 28,386 points from 84 wipeouts, while Johnston scored 7,196 points from 21 wipeouts.
The company said the event also served as an example of its Automated Competition Scoring product operating outside a traditional competition format.
“URBNSURF Sydney has been a fantastic partner in pushing what’s possible at the intersection of wave pools and technology,” said Wallace. “Hosting an event like this, with this kind of scale and stakes, is exactly the kind of collaboration that helps us prove the model in the real world.”
Flowstate said the event was designed to test automated scoring, gamification and progression tracking during a continuous 12-hour surf session using URBNSURF Sydney’s wave technology.
