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TV: Will wave pools make flat craft the next big thing?

The sport that started in the 1920s in Southern California on found, salvaged bits of plywood has today expanded across the globe. And is now finding traction in the growing wave pool world.

Austin Keen and Blair Conklin have taken an activity favored by clumsy vacationers, day drunks and kids-in-cutoffs and made it, well, totally cool. Helping legitimize the skids movement is the fact that Blair is an amazing surfer too.

As beach and wave pool playgrounds collide, we should see a new hybrid sport of skimming in wave pools. To this end, we searched out a few clips for your viewing pleasure. Along with Austin and Blair, we found great finless wave pool surfing from John Akerman at Typhoon Lagoon and Joel Parkinson at Kelly’s. Enjoy

Blair Conklin gets creative

Blair Conklin told us he wants to design a new kind of wave pool, one that is “friendly and accessible” for all. When we saw clips of Blair paddling a skim into waves at the BSR Surf Resort it hit us that in the world of wave pool surfing, there are many new surf-related sports about to pop. Blair’s performance at Waco, paddling into a nasty right and combo-ing an alley-oop-to-tube opened our eyes to what is possible.

Austin Keen is made of gas

Austin Keen has a body composed of helium. Maybe his dreadlocks are magic? We don’t know. Either way, he can push a pizza pan across flat water for amazing distances. He sampled Kelly’s wave pool last year and produced this banger of a clip.

Typhoon Lagoon gets the shove

Instagram’s @neatntidey caught John Akerman at Typhoon Lagoon pumping into a sick, little left. The 2018 World Wakesurf Champ executes a clean 360 pop shove it, then heads down the line to do some cutback-shove-it-thingy we aren’t quite sure what to call.

Joel Parkinson gets weird

Joel Parkinson took out a skim at the Surf Ranch while mate Mick Fanning filmed and hooted. Skimboards are simply good times.

Bonus: And, uh, skis?

After skimboards open the door to more and varied craft in a chlorinated setting, there are opportunities for things like skis. Yup. Skis.

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