The Crystal Bong: A Look Into The Future of Wave Pools
"2039: Gabriel Medina has closed the last remaining surf park citing a lack of clean water, the 2037 Global Crypto Crisis, a fifth syphilis pandemic, and an (unrelated) third divorce..."
I’ve written a lot about Surf Parks and Wave Pool technology over the last decade. I’d be surprised if anyone, not working in the industry itself, has covered it more. What a fucking epitaph. For Tracks, I covered the nascent surf park culture in this piece. The tagline was, “Donkey, unicorn, or a mechanical bull at the bar? Are wave pools the petri dish for a new, better, inclusive surf culture, or the death of it?” My answer? A definitive, maybe.
On the whole, I’m conflicted. Why do we need to monetise surfing? It’s one of the last few free, good, things left. On the other hand, I’ve surfed the various pools and realise that the stoke is real. Why should that be taken away? In any case, it’s all irrelevant. There are 17 wave parks open or due to open in 2024, including the one in Sydney, which has 2 million people located within a half-hour drive radius. Wavegarden alone say they have a further 70 in development, across five continents.
Which brings us to the future. Well, I broke out the crystal bong and looked into where we are headed in terms of wave pools. And it goes a little like this.
2028 Melbourne Boardriders Win Battle Of The Boardriders
In a shock win the Melbourne Boardriders Club based out of Urnbsurf, has claimed the Equinor Australian Boardriders Battle. Formed in 2020 and known locally as The Tullamarine Tigers (though disparagingly called the Chlorinated Kooks or Tub Turkeys by established rivals), they defeated Snapper Rocks Boardriders on their home patch of the Superbank.
“People said we couldn’t perform outside the tank,” said star performer Xavier Huxtable who had controversially switched from Torquay Boardriders a year before in a $600,000 deal that included a year's worth of free sessions and a cut of the lucrative soft top sales. “However we’ve been training twice a day, every day, for the last year with a team of high-performance coaches including Olympic divers and pole vaulters. No one has surfed more than us, and it showed.” The club celebrated with a huge party at Hudson’s Coffee at Tullamarine Terminal 2. You really had to be there.
2031 The Surf Park League World Titles
Less than ten years after the first QS event was held in Melbourne Wavegarden pool Kai Ordriozola has won the sport’s biggest prize, The Surf Park League (SPL) World Title. With the WSL folding in 2029, and the SPL becoming the defacto sport’s governing body, Ordriozola can now claim to be the sport’s undisputed champion.
Given he is the son of the Wavegarden owners, it is perhaps unsurprising that the 26-year-old has dominated the chlorine series. In front of 50,000 fans at the Samsung Shisheido Shanghai Superdome, the Basque surfer was pushed by rising star Lar Mer M’bappe.
The 16-year-old son of football superstar Kylian, he turned his back on a lucrative football career, after learning to surf in the pool at the La Vague Grand in his hometown of Paris. Kyle “The Cockburn Kid” King, was Australia’s best finisher in third. He promised to use his 16,000 Etherium prizemoney to rebuild the Perth pool where he learned to surf that had recently been destroyed by flood and fire.
2038 – A Visit To The Last Remaining Wave Park
Looking more like a disused carnival site from a Scooby-Doo movie rather than the performance surf clubs that promised to “use technology as an ally to a cutting-edge human experience” Gabriel Medina has closed the last remaining surf park on the planet. Citing a lack of clean water, the 2037 Global Crypto Crisis, a fifth syphilis pandemic, and a third divorce, The 6X World Champion said the park was “commercially, morally and environmentally” unviable.
At their peak in 2029, there were thought to be 286 surf parks around the world. By 2034, just 15 remained. Medina had hung on to his four-pool franchise longer than most but had to fold. “I suppose all our clients will just have to go and surf in the ocean,” he said. “It’s free after all, and how I started in surfing. Maybe it’s time we just use what the planet has provided?”