Before Wavegarden alerted the world to its Cove technology and long before Surf Lakes’ Australian centralized hub technology swelled our freshwater surf lust, the world was focused for months on the Kelly Slater wave pool (as it was known then) in Lemoore California.

For weeks (maybe even a month, which is like, 109 in YouTube years) the surfing world was glued to Kelly’s delicate handling of his GoPro inside the barrel at the Surf Ranch.

At the time questions were bouncing around and the whole project was still shrouded in mystery: Where was the location of the Kelly Slater wave pool? How much did Slater’s pool cost to build?

Slater Wave Pool facts were released slowly to the public

The Kelly Slater Wave Company was founded in 2007 with the champ doing initial research in a warehouse in Los Angeles. He worked for a stint with Greg Webber until the two parted was to do their own technology (the remnants of their split logged through several deleted social media posts.)

The 2,000 foot long lake, originally built for water-skiing and wake boarding, has a unique hydrofoil machine that runs down a central track to push out the wave. The setup is similar to the Wavegarden Lagoon tech, but favors a more abrupt angle of wave projection and a steep bottom contour than the Wavegarden original.

Estimates for the cost of Kelly’s dream project vary between $2 million and $20 million, and yes that’s an $18 million dollar difference – welcome to the intentionally-vague guestimations of the wave pool business.

When this clip aired we knew none of this, but with the beauty of 2020 hindsight, we now know.

Classic TV: Kelly Slater’s GoPro POV juggling still stokes

So here’s the clip that freaked everybody the f*ck out. And for good reason, collectively we’d never seen anything like it.

Can a wave pool clip be a classic after only 18 months? Is that like saying, “remember the  2017 Tessla S?”

Since then Kelly’s wave has evolved into a new WSL platform that may save or soil pro surfing (see WSL Founder’s Cup report here). But for now let’s flashback to the good ol’ days when we knew nada about this wave and readily inhaled Kelly’s magic GoPro moment.