It’s hard to believe that the rodeo flip of Jordy Smith’s at Macaronis was filmed in 2009. It was groundbreaking then, and it still holds ground today for what is an extraordinarily intense and full-bore backhand rodeo air.
In 2009 there was a lot at stake in the digital realm, as all surf brands and their associated media teams went into overdrive in the search for clicks, views and engagement, and as the monetized side of social media and web traffic hadn’t quite sorted itself out yet, it was a time when more was more, because there was nowhere else to go.
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The thirst for online engagement was a little bit out of whack with normal media spread, but there were companies that engaged with the reality, and went out there and did what needed to be done in order to get their lion’s share of the online space.
Vans was one of the first surf brands to start getting real online traction, but then Red Bull came into the picture and started eating up available online space. They did a great job of it, because they knew how to do it, and because they had some prized athletes.
It is always an expensive exercise to send a crew to the Mentawais. We know, because we’ve done it. It nearly always has a good result however, as the Mentawais consistently conjures up something for the cameras, even late season.
This trip had a golden crew. Kolohe Andino, Connor Coffin, Cristobal de Col, Andy King, and Jordy Smith, among others.
The Rodeo Clown is essentially a backhand air into a flat spin, and Slater attempted it at Pipe in 1999 on a 6’10 pintail. Remember that?
The water angle of this move was the first thing you saw when the video broke, with a blaring soundtrack of ‘Derek Miller – Devil Come Down Sunday’ – and it was totally rock n roll. It needed to be slowed down, to be watched again and again.
Then you were introduced to the front angle, in real time, and the radicalness of the move, the speed, and inversion, the technique, as well as the rest of the ride – Jordy goes straight into a huge backhand cutback into re-entry before pulling out with a stoked claim – was revealed. Best move ever seen at that stage? It definitely gave that feeling, of eclipsing everything else in the realm of performance surfing.
Red Bull coach Andy King was pretty flustered on the boat after what he had witnessed, and Jordy was beaming, acknowledging the best move of his life, and humbly stating that it all happened so fast that he could barely remember it.
Whether he could remember it or not, the camera crew had nailed it. Multiple angles and perfect focus revealed all the nuances of the move. At that stage of the game GoPro’s were still being designed, and drones were things the military used to drop bombs and hurt people. So with the available tech, the camera crew must have been celebrating.
Not as much as Red Bull though, because although it was one of the best moves ever captured on film, it was their move. They owned the footage, and they sponsored the rider doing that move.
“That single move paid for the whole trip,” said a stoked Red Bull executive involved with the project at the time. “That one move made the whole project worth it.”
Over on YouTube, the views started moving on up. They climbed towards the 100k mark and went straight through without slowing down. In fact, the ascent showed no sign of decelerating up until the 500k views mark, before showing a few little pauses and breaths, before continuing north.
Even though there were a couple of pirated copies filtering out, the original clip went over the 1Million mark, before it finally started to stabilize thereafter.
At that point in time, it was definitely one of the greatest moves ever captured on film, but was it one of the greatest rides of all time?
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