Kai Lenny, SUP world champion, came back from the first event of this year’s tour a winner. We got a chance to pick his brain about the challenging conditions the riders faced at the Sunset Beach Pro this year and what Kai’s board choices were for the event.
It seems that with the wide variety of conditions that you guys encountered during the event (ranging from 12 foot waves to slightly over head high), you had to switch between different boards in order to match the conditions.
What was your board choice for the big days?
The waves at Sunset are notorious for catching you off guard. The place is really challenging, so I always choose bigger boards. My Hokua 9’8″ Gun definitely did the job! Having a longer board gave me the advantage of catching waves early and let me position myself better. I’m able to move around so much faster on the Hokua 9’8″ Gun and the length and narrow pin tail lets me set a steady turn at high speeds.
Once the waves got smaller, we saw you performing much tighter turns and you had a more vertical style than any other rider. What board were you on then?
I was riding my Hokua 8’0″ which allowed me to ride waves like on a shortboard. This board was so good when the swell was going down and there were great waves to play on. The Hokua 8’0″ is basically a scaled up shortboard. I developed it together with Harold Iggy, Robby [Naish] and Michi [Schweiger] and over time we realized that even bigger guys are able to ride it in good conditions.
What would you say sets the Naish performance boards apart from what your competitors are using?
The reason Naish boards are so good is because the whole development team is constantly thinking outside the box. I work a lot with them in the R&D process and we’ve been trying a lot of different things and taking inspiration from other sports – from classic surfboard designs to windsurf board designs. The combination of all these things is how Naish creates boards that perform so well in a wide variety of conditions.
Are any of your boards custom boards?
You know, I would rather ride my production boards any day because they’re so good and if I break a board, I’m guaranteed to have the exact same board again. In general, all of the Naish Team riders ride production boards. The only time when we’re on custom boards is when we are testing prototypes.
So…what’s next for you?
Looking to the future, I hope to defend my title for 2011 and take the sport of stand up paddling to the next performance level. I also hope to inspire kids to follow their dreams and never give them up!
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