Mike Stewart and Kelly Slater: kings of their own castles

Mike Stewart has been invited to ride a bodyboard at the Surf Ranch, in Lemoore, California.

The nine-time world champion got a golden ticket from longtime friend Kelly Slater to surf the famous world-class artificial wave.

Although he was not the first bodyboarder to ride the Surf Ranch, Stewart had the privilege to experience the long-peeling wave unveiled in 2015.

"What's beyond those gates is hard to fathom. It's basically a peeling left and a right that's almost a kilometer long. It's mind-bending," said the Hawaiian waterman after testing the Surf Ranch.

"The wave is more challenging to ride than to mind-surf, that's for sure. But still, it is amazingly fun."

According to Mike Stewart, riding this man-made wave is not as easy as it might look at first glance.

"Oddly, I was not able to rely on the years of experience reading a wave face to figure out when a section was coming. You just have to remember it's coming," notes the bodyboarding legend.

"There is time to do so much, once you learn the timing of everything. I wasn't entirely successful as its a pretty fast wave, but the sections are makeable."

"The end is maybe like a super fast rip bowl. If I make it back there, I think there are a couple of sections I could bodysurf," conclude the greatest bodyboarder of all time.

 

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