It doesn’t take a genius to see a picture of maxing Pipe and know it probably takes a specially crafted piece of foam to get barreled there and live to tell about it. Now, if a board made for that wave is so darn great at its purpose they decided to call it The Pipeliner, well, somebody must be on to something here.
And Rory Russell is up there on the short list of guys who made the Banzai Pipeline the Banzai Pipeline. If anybody knows the mechanics of what kind of board is going to get you in and out of that wave, it’s a man who won the Pipe Masters twice back in a day before thrusters had yet to take over the world. Now remember, he accomplished this right at the midpoint between the introduction of the shortboard and the thruster, so there were a lot of people tinkering with surfboards in Russell’s prime. All this makes his the perfect brain to pick when understanding what makes a perfect board for surfing our most legendary wave. And like the man says, “Once you find that right design for a board, you don’t wanna change it if it works.”
