Surfing
Has Carissa Moore Got the Best Technique on Tour?
The two-time world champ has her feet planted firmly in the right spot.
Carissa Moore Air
© Trevor Moran
Technique matters. It's the difference between being a game changer and a numbers maker. Between top three or better in the world and shuffling orbits on the qualifying series.
It's the difference of an eighth-of-an-inch in foot placement, the ability to shift around your board in response to curves in the wave and to the subtlety of the rocker in your board and the shape of the rail line.
And Carissa Moore? The two-time world champ from Honolulu? She's got her technique dialled better than anyone on tour. Stephanie Gilmore, the current champ, is close, but with style in her mind, she'll ride a little forward if necessary to find the aesthetic she's chasing.
Carissa, like Kelly Slater, finds her own style in the perfection of her technique. Their philosphy is zen: that only in the purity of function will style follow.
Carissa Moore takes on Pipeline
© Trevor Moran
Click here and watch her in motion. I want you to study how she opens her shoulders on those top turns (spray!), how a familiarity with the boards of her shaper Matt Biolos allows her to surf as if the board was an extension of her feet (note how she'll delay her bottom turn to allow the wave to hit the bank a little harder, to curve, so she can attack exactly in the pocket). Watch, now, how she pushes as she goes into the lip, pulls as she gets air, centres, and lands.
Shane Beschen, the former sparring partner of Kelly Slater (same age, once scored three 10s on three waves in a World Tour heat, still the highest-scoring heat in history) knows it. He's been working on Carissa's air game (trampolines, video sessions at Trestles) and he's seen her refine her technique to such a point that she can hammer a move that'll give her a heat, at will. All she needs is a vaguely cooperative wave.
"There was a moment two years ago at the US Open at Huntington Beach," says Shane. "And she was in the semis and losing to Sally Fitzgibbons. The waves were really bad and it was high tide and it had stopped breaking on the outside. It came down to one wave. Carissa caught it, there was nothing to hit on the outside and she barely had enough momentum to get to the shore. But, when she got there, she did this huge throw-tail. A proper throw-tail. She threw half the board out of the water and stomped it clean. You see very few things like that in women's surfing. The crowd went wild. I was super-psyched, but I didn't know how the judges were going to react. No moves on the outside? But she scored a nine."
Technique? Yeah, it matters.