Ryan Callinan, hull and rudder at the car wash, NSW

Yes, this is the very same Ryan Callinan who clinically swooped into backside, hands-free Backdoor caves to beat Dane Reynolds and Shane Dorian, separately, in the Pipe Masters. And that ain’t even his creme! Mr Callinan really flowers when driving frontside out of a bottom turn into a lip. In this photo we find him moments after that very happening. Let’s go bigger picture, though: “Ryan came down to the south coast for a few days in the hope of scoring a pretty rare spot,” says the photographer, Troy Simpson. “We were planning on shooting an eight-to-10-foot tubing left but like many south coast swells it either pumps or it’s small and onshore. This occasion was the latter so we ducked around the corner to hit semi-clean, three-foot wedging lefts. Bummer for us (laughs). The next day we shot one of the South Coast’s most well-known beaches with only Ryan out. And we got our car waxed. Epic.”