By Jake Howard
This week, the Relik World Longboard Tour lands at Lowers, and with a solid south swell lining up, it’s setting up to be another successful year for the event.
For almost 20 years, we were used to seeing the WSL Championship Tour steam through town around this time of year, but Relik scooped up the California State Parks permit to run a professional surf contest at Lowers after the WSL opted for the Surf Ranch in Lemoore in 2018.
Featuring a Who’s Who of the best loggers and high-performance longboarders, this is the second year for Relik at Lowers. The first stop was this summer at Malibu, where they scored perfect three-footers at First Point.
Among the local talent in the mix at Lowers will be pro-turned-realtor Christian Wach, shaper/artist Tyler Warren and Lindsay Steinriede, who’s been on a roll on the WSL World Longboard Tour.
The judging criteria for the Relik contests are a little different than other, more traditional criteria. They utilize something they refer to as “the three Ts”:
Timing: The ability to ride the entire wave without running ahead or falling behind the curl, but with the proper application of turns, stalls and cutbacks, moving smoothly in and out of the pocket.
Tempo: Matching the speed of the board to the speed of the wave and carrying that speed throughout a series of integrated maneuvers.
Trim: Maintaining optimum speed throughout the ride, through all sections of the wave, without the hopping or pumping associated with shortboard surfing.
The contest will run on Oct. 2 and Oct. 3. There will be a live webcast of finals day on SurfRelik.com on Oct. 3.
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