Watch: Everything You Missed At The Inaugural Swatch Nines Surf Event

The Swatch Nines Surf was a marathon disguised as a series of sprints.

It was a three-day event featuring 19 surfers — and a melange of humanity, including a BMXer, the Swatch CEO, Greyson Fletcher, a mainstream influencer-type, and Stab’s favorite former Trader Joe’s employee.

With that much time in the pool, it only took one day for all of the surfers to exhaust themselves. However, on Day 2, it only took one wave for them all to get back straight in the swing of things. Despite how tired you’d be after hitting 30 ramps in a day, you’ve got no choice but to rally and go harder.

As you might imagine, the vibes on site were cruising at around 42,000 feet. It was a bad place to be a cooler full of beer and a good place for most other objects, including (but not limited to) docks, orbs, rails, and ramps. It’s hard to label such an event, but the most fitting description came from recent Swatch pickup Noah Beschen, who described it as an “art show.”

And, hamster wheels aside, there was some proper good trad (ish) surfing, ranging from Bal’s straight air to Zeke’s big spin to Victor’s alley-oop to Tya’s superwoman and Kiara’s full-rote.

But why read about these things when you can watch them in the full recap video above?

Before we go, a quick note on the awards. The Swatch Nines crew selected finalists for each category. Then, during the closing party, a phone-based live voting system enabled the surfers themselves to choose a winner in real-time. Polls would open for about 20 seconds, and you’d watch the votes pour in on a screen. Sometimes, someone would run away with it from the jump. Other times, the screen would linger on a tie until a last-minute vote came and pushed someone over the edge.

What fun.

Word on the street suggests they’re already eyeing up the second edition for next year.

Waco it’s a trip surf (best vibes award): Mason Ho
Waco it’s a trip skate(best vibes award): Greyson Fletcher
Stab grab award: (best straight air w/ grab) Balaram Stack
GoPro award: Koa Smith
Best air female: Tya Zebrowski
Best air male: Victor Bernadro
MVP female: Kiara gold
MVP male: Greyson Fletcher