Photo: Kai Lenny // YouTube
In recent years, the specialty surfing invitational has been having a moment. Once, surf fans really just had to watch the WSL and sit down and shut up if they didn’t like it, but that’s no longer the case. From the Da Hui Backdoor Shootout, to Capitulo Perfeito, to the Four Seasons Maldives Trophy and Padang Padang, there’s a plethora of alternative options. Even among all that variety, the Quiksilver Festival stands out
The event takes place at France’s iconic beaches of Capbreton, Hossegor and Seignosse. Appropriately, the entrants are hand-picked by French surfing legend Jeremy Flores. One of the surfers to get the tap from Flores this year was Kai Lenny, who said of the competition, “It’s basically surfing and partying, and the champion in the end will win. While I’m not a partier, we definitely gave it a good crack. The coolest thing [about] being able to do this event is that you get get the best surfers that haven’t maybe competed in 14 years and they come out of the woodwork and they’re just shredding.”
That wasn’t the end of the journey, though. As he showed in a new YouTube edit, the Quiksilver Festival ended up anchoring an entire European odyssey, that also took him on a detour to Basque Country, where he checked out the Wave Garden Lab and foiled a river wave.
“Every single time I got to go out there, I learned something new,” summed up Lenny. “In life, it’s all about learning something and taking it to the next level. That’s what I learned on this trip. It was 10 days of great surf training. Even if we didn’t have the best surf there ever was, we still had a lot of good times. I’m almost bummed that it’s over, but onto the next adventure, back to Hawaii.”
