Stadium surfing has lift-off: Inside Kelly Slater’s landlocked surf break

Champion surfer Gabriel Medina climbs aboard the new wave of competition surfing: a custom-built stadium on a man-made break. No ocean in sight.

Onto the jet ski. Into the liquid stadium. A voice comes over the loudspeaker. Thirty seconds! Australia’s Connor O’Leary is in the water.

The first thing about Surf Ranch … it ain’t crowded. Next wave’s yours.

Gabriel Medina jumps on the back of the ski. He grabs my waist like we’re taking a motorcycle for a spin to Fresno. He’s tapping his foot. He wants in. It’ll come sooner than he thinks.

The man-made wave produces an unexpected sound. The sound of the ocean. It shouldn’t be a shock but out here in the middle of California nothingness, it is.

Thirty seconds, 20, 10, none. The jumbotron whirrs into action. It sounds like the deep-throated rumble of a train departing a station. Quite the racket.

It clonks along a single metal track at 30km/hour with the aid of more than 150 truck tyres and cables.

An airplane-wing shaped hydrofoil is dragged through waist-deep water, producing this freakish wave that starts knee-high before growing to two metres.

The bottom of the pool has a soft and rubbery surface, sloping in different sections to ensure the wave peels and unfurls the way it does.

From this vantage point, up close and personal, the wave is more powerful than I’ve expected. Webcasts and television coverage cannot do it justice.

Up and at ‘em. O’Leary whacks the lip three times. He curls into a barrel. He goes too deep and fails to reappear.

Medina has attached his leg rope before we’ve ventured out. I’ve wondered why. Here’s why. When O’Leary falls, Medina lets go of my waist, jumps off the back of our ski and pounces on the rest of the wave.

His board skims across the water, he’s laying on his belly, he jumps to his feet and ducks into the same tube that has swallowed O’Leary.

It’s an amazing little burst of skill from an ex-world champion. He comes out, snakes along with a few effortless turns, stalls and goes back inside the latest offering from the Kelly Slater-designed barrel factory.

He doesn’t make it, which says something for the all-important pace of the wave. It’s no Mickey-Mouse invention.

On another ride, Medina carves from start to finish, gets tubed twice, pulls out at the end and shouts, “Legs are burning!”

Surfers know the feeling. The leg-burners are the legitimate rides.

The Surf Ranch Pro begins on Friday, Australian time.

Stadium surfing has lift-off. At the front gate of the fenced-off establishment is a sign that says: “Welcome To ... the Future Of Waves.”

Medina surfs off the lip at Lemoore earlier this year during the WSL Founders' Cup of Surfing at the Kelly Slater Surf Ranch in May. Picture: Mark Ralston/AFP