Eli Hanneman Lofts On His Maiden Australian Voyage

Barely hours into his first Australian trip, 14 year-old Eli Hanneman was jumping out of the Cabarita bowl. This here frame, ripped from lensman Layne Stratton’s memory card, captured the Hawaiian teen phenomenon yesterday afternoon mid-flight on what one might initially mistake for a tow-driven pop, or perhaps a throwaway, but isn’t. Yeah, he stuck it. When you learn that the boy was riding out of his first aerials at age eight, then it’s not so hard to believe. Anyway, Eli’s here on business. With a band of similarly-aged similarly-gifted cadets the squad are going in to train with Hurley’s elite High Performance Centre – not that any of them are in need of any further assistance. In between sessions you can expect them to be sampling the fruits of Northern New South Wales and making many a middle-aged surfer feel tired and irrelevant.