Welcome to the 4th edition of The Bodyboard Report! 🤙

With Antofagasta just around the corner, riders and fans can only hope that La Nilda delivers the goods so we can have ourselves a real boogie party.

But what if one can guarantee those perfect waves?

If I was Neptune, and I could command perfection for every contest, I tell you now, bodyboarding would be a mainstream global spectator sport that draws massive crowds everywhere.

And with them, unlimited sponsors and cash for our beloved sport.

But that’s nature for you…

Chasing perfection is what makes us check the swell every day.

The ultimate bliss – the stoke – That comes when the elements align and the magic hits, wrapping itself around you in a 6-8ft blanket, or simply viewing it from the air up there…

Not too long ago, someone somewhere wanted to play Neptune, or Poseidon, or Aquaman…

Why not guarantee perfection? Always on perfection.

Isn’t that a grand train of thought? And massive attraction!

Enter wave pools. 🌊🌊🌊🌊

It’s fast and shallow, so grab your favourite board and a helmet, and let’s dive right in.

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There was a time when wave pools were a joke. Big splashes, with no shape, and no real ride. Back in 1969, a place called Big Surf opened in Arizona.

It was one of the first attempts at creating surfable waves inland. Technically impressive for the time, but not exactly Pipeline.

The real shift came later when engineers and designers stopped asking

“How do we make a wave?”

And started asking “How do we make a good one?”

That’s where things changed. Companies like -

Wavegarden

American Wave Machines

Perfect Swell Technology and later

Kelly Slater’s Wave Co.

started focusing on something the ocean has always known…

The bottom matters. A lot!

It’s not the wave… it’s the floor. In the ocean, waves are shaped by what’s underneath them. Reefs. Sandbanks. Points.

That’s what turns moving water and energy into something rideable. Same energy in the same direction, but a completely different result depending on the bottom.

Wave pool designers figured this out. The machine creates the push, but the floor creates the ride. Modern pools don’t just make waves…

The end result is pre-sculpted.

Peeling walls. Running sections. Even barrels and wedging ramps. All controlled. All repeatable. And that’s where things start to get interesting for bodyboarding.

The cheat code many neglect to think about: Wave pools are not about replacing the ocean. They’re about removing randomness.

Same section. Same timing. Same opportunity. Again. And again.

That means you can fail… adjust… and go straight back into the exact same situation.

Surfing and bodyboarding are one of the few sports where you cannot rinse and repeat, like for example, golf, cricket, baseball… pretty much any ball sport or team sport. Even skateboarding and such have a fixed training ground.

You can’t have that in the ocean, all the time. Every rider, including myself, will tell you: The first time you go to Hawaii, Indo, or any consistent place like that with big surf all the time, your surfing improves ten-fold in a matter of 2 weeks.

Get one big, quality wave after the other… day after day… that’s how you progress. After 2 weeks you cannot believe how an 8 footer suddenly feels so “small” by comparison.

For bodyboarders, a wave pool is a different kind of training. Take off timing gets sharper. Line choice gets cleaner. Spins, rolls, projections, all become more deliberate.

Less guessing. More understanding. ☝️

It’s like turning the sport into a controlled experiment, and some riders are getting very good, very fast because of it. There is a catch, because something is missing.

No wind shift. No rogue set. No panic paddle. No guy deeper than you who just went anyway.

In the ocean, you don’t just ride waves, you read them. You react to them. You survive them sometimes. Contests are often decided by the best wave reader.

Wave pools remove that layer because the ocean doesn’t repeat itself, that unpredictability is where a lot of real progression actually lives.

With 12 surf parks in operation and more than 10 Wavegarden Coves under construction and up to 45 projects in development across 4 continents in the coming years, Wavegarden is considered by to be the market leader in the rapidly emerging world of wave generation technology.

This tells us that the business of artificial waves is good business, and that in itself is a good thing for all wave riders and surf sports.

Wavegarden was founded in 2005 when Spanish engineer, Josema Odriozola, and German sports economist, Karin Frisch, decided to combine their love of surfing with their expertise in designing and building sports facilities.

For the entrepreneurs, their driving force had always been about building a platform for stoke. Living near the ocean, the founders always believed that the best sports facility was simply a beach with good waves.

21 years ago, wave-generating technologies of this scope and ambition did not exist. Josema and Karin needed to start from scratch…

This is one of the cleanest examples of how far things have come.

A Wavegarden setup pushing out waves every few seconds, across multiple skill levels.

Beginners. Intermediates. Advanced lines.

And importantly… They’ve opened the door for bodyboarders too.

Not as an afterthought. As part of the system.

Here’s Jeff Hubbard and Rob Barber doing what they do best in Bristol.

Check out South Africa’s M-Star Distribution owner & bodyboard shaper Mika Justino tearing up The Wave on a recent trip.

The Wave is also home to the Bristol Bodyboarders Club – A fascinating post-Covid story for a future edition of The Bodyboard Report.

Yes… this one is real.

Alaïa Bay offers perfect peeling waves, in the ice cold mountains.

How awesome is that!?

No ocean in sight, even with a majestic view from the top of the world.

Barrels and fun aplenty!

And again, bodyboards are welcome.

Which says a lot about where things are heading.

Suddenly, getting barreled in the Swiss Alpes is higher on my bucket list than many dream spots around the world.

Here’s 2 x World Champ PLC and 5 x World Champ Isabela Sousa - the coolest of cool cucumbers - drawing lines in the melted snow at Alaïa Bay.

If you want to see where wave pools stop being a novelty, look at Australia.

This is not a country that needs artificial waves. They already have some of the best coastlines and consistent swell on earth.

And still… they’re building more. That tells you something…

URBNSURF (styled an spelled like that) is the flagship.

Multiple wave settings. Different directions. Different levels.

From first timers, to guys trying to dial in high-performance lines.

It’s basically a controlled progression system.

Same section, different skill levels, no guesswork.

And that’s where it becomes useful, not just fun.

A day pass gives you access to surf as much as you can!

No limit, just wave after wave. 

Paddle out, reset, go again.

As good a marketing as any when they put it like this -

“The best excuse to chuck a sickie and escape the daily grind.”

Surf Lakes is quite different from the rest.

Instead of one wave, it creates multiple breaks at once. One central piston pulse, and waves radiate outward in all directions.

Different shapes, different speeds, different difficulty, all from the same energy source. It’s probably the closest thing to simulating a real lineup.

 And that’s where it becomes useful, not just fun.

Australian legend and 3 x World Champ Ben Player takes us deep inside the green barrels and also the brown barrels of Surf Lakes.

PS: If you haven’t caught Ben’s Far North cold water insanity, then be sure to check it out here.

Previous publicatons. 👇

1st Edition 🌊

2nd Edition 🌊

3rd Edition 🌊

Disclaimer: The Bodyboard Report is published for informational and entertainment purposes only. All images, media, and referenced content remain the copyright of their respective owners and are used for editorial commentary and community sharing. The Bodyboard Report does not claim ownership of any third party content.