Getty Image / Brian Otieno / iStock Images / Magui-rfajardo
Prince Harry can rip it up on a surfboard. I don’t know why I was surprised by this because I shouldn’t be, he does live in LA. But given that we’ve never seen him surfing until now it comes as a bit of a surprise.
Tahitian surfing legend Raimana Van Bastolaer, the same guy who mentored Kauli Vaast who won a gold medal for Tahiti at the Paris Olympics, shared a video of Prince Harry surfing alongside Kelly Slater and others at Kelly’s wave pool in Austin which is believed to be the future of surfing by making the sport more accessible to people all across the planet.
Lo and behold, Prince Harry can shred and hold his own in front of the greatest surfer of all time, Kelly Slater. Check it out:
I think my favorite part of this clip isn’t that Prince Harry surfing looks so effortless but that he opted to jump into the wave from the ski instead of paddling in. Could he paddle into a wave? Sure. He’s evidently in great shape. But paddling is the worst part of surfing. It’s exhausting. And Prince Harry is already such a seasoned veteran he would rather hop off a boat/ski and glide into the wave versus debase himself to paddle in and I respect that.
Another funny aspect of this video is how none of the major media outlets, literally none of them, that normally post about Prince Harry and the Royal Family have seen this clip. The man who posted this video, Raimana Van Bastolaer, is a legend in the surfing world but apparently he flies under the radar of all the media outlets that would normally care about anything and everything Prince Harry does. That kind of goes to show what the appeal of surfing might be for Prince Harry…
Here is a deeper look at Kelly Slater’s Wave ranch in Austin. ESPN did a video on it 5 years ago. Incredibly, the tech on these wave pools improves every year: