Friday, June 19, 2009 1:30pm PDT

Jordy Smith Smashes Another Barrier

By: Chris Mauro, GrindTV.com

South African surfer Jordy Smith is was the talk of the surfing world last year. The highly-touted rookie on the ASP World Tour became one of the highest paid surfers in the business back in 2008. But when he failed to produce any solid results he was being blasted by his critics. But after a late run toward the end of the year, Mr. Smith has clearly turned things around. Now he's not only silencing his critics, he's converting them into fans. The reason? Well, for starters he came out of the gate firing this year. He's now rated 6th place in the world, with no signs of slowing. But it's his most recent accomplishment that has the surfing world buzzing, as Jordy was the first to pull a maneuver that was simply unimaginable just five years ago.

Surfing pundits are now weighing in on this high-flying rotating-flip into a reverse 360, and most are referring to it as the most high-performance maneuver ever executed on a wave. One thing's for sure, surfing is getting incredibly acrobatic. See the evidence for yourself...

Channels: Surf

Tags: Jordy SmithRed BullType Tag Here

FEATURED NEWS

"Record" for Largest Wave Ever Ridden Trivializes Big-Wave Surfing

"Record" for Largest Wave Ever Ridden Trivializes Big-Wave Surfing

A return to old-school measuring techniques is in order

Consider two representations of two very big waves, below. The first is a photograph of Mike Parsons at Cortes Bank. The second is a video of Garrett McNamara near Nazare, Portugal. Now take out some measuring tape and make the distance of one foot between your hands. That's the amount, according to the Billabong XXL committee, that McNamara's wave is bigger than Parsons's wave.

4 Comments

 1-4 of 4

kimmel

Posted by kimmel June 22, 2009 09:57am PDTReply | Report Abuse

Great that they captured this on film!

ehscook

Posted by ehscook July 2, 2009 01:09pm PDTReply | Report Abuse

This show was great! I would love to be in the ocean right now! Jordy for president!

aloha11

Posted by aloha11 July 2, 2009 04:06pm PDTReply | Report Abuse

Super Sik

bellajohned

Posted by bellajohned July 2, 2009 10:08pm PDTReply | Report Abuse

I used to surf trestles when you had to paddle from "cottons point because of the risk of marines taking your board. Nice to see waves that reminded me of a day when Bob Cooper, Mike Sheerin, and I surfed uppers for six hours-6-8ft, glassy all day and free as a young man could ever hope to be. It was a joy and thrill(even though goofy-footed)to drop in on a wave(low tide) crank a hard right bottom turn, get covered, and see out the back the turquoise green suffused with the light of the day and know there was more to come and no one in sight!!! I quit surfing because of the crowds, but never lost the joy of it and whebn I go down to So. Cal. I always stop at Basilone Road and check it out-35 years later and the rush is still there!

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