JOB Wins Stand-Up Bodyboarding Trials For Pipe Invitational

Words By Jed Smith

Jamie O’Brien has continued the proud tradition of Hawaiian stand-up bodyboarding with a dominant display in the final of the Mike Stewart Pipeline Invitational trials. JOB took out first place in the stand-up division with a combined total of 18.6 for a pair of tubes. The win earns him a place in two divisions of the main event, having already been awarded an wildcard for the prone division courtesy of good friend and contest director, Mike Stewart.

Watch Jamie slay the SUB here.

“I started booging when I was a little kid,” he told APB. “I won all kinds of events and Nationals as a bodyboarder and never won that on a shortboard.”

In fact, Jamie competed in the state championship divisions of kneeboarding, bodyboarding, paddle boarding, iron man, shortboarding, and claimed a runner-up as a longboarder in his teens.

Inspired by Hawaii’s pioneering generation of stand-up bodyboarding legends, including Danny Kim, Chris Won and Cavin Yap, Jamie will be hoping to defend the proud legacy of this forgotten art in the islands.

Danny Kim, from Oahu’s West Side, famously won the US Bodyboarding championships in 1985 standing on his bodyboard while everyone else rode prone.

“Back in ’85, I qualified for the US championships in Ventura (California),” Kim told Riptide Magazine. “All the riders that I was competing with were laying down, and when I stood up on a bodyboard and did 360s and a couple of carves and tube rides, the crowd went crazy because they had never seen anything like this before.”

Chris Won, meanwhile, forged a reputation for powerful lip hits, rail turns, and multiple spinners, not to mention some serious waves at Pipe. While Cavin Yap took stand-up bodyboarding above the lip, punting aerials at Off The Wall and blowing minds with power hacks and snaps.

The waiting period for the main event begins February 21st.