Michel Bourez is a fantastic tube rider. A big part of riding barrels is some kind of strange, innate knowledge of what one needs to do–not something anyone would ever think of doing, but something that needs to be done nonetheless. Remember Riding Giants? Remember how Laird dragged his back hand to “keep himself from getting sucked up into that hydraulic“? Yeah, it’s things like that that make a fantastic tube rider. And Michel Bourez? Well, he’s a fantastic tube rider. The consequence wasn’t nearly as high as Laird’s Teahupoo wave, but that same weird, innate sense is there. In the eleventh heat of the first round of the Outerknown Fiji Pro, Bourez pulled into the tube and did something really weird: he dragged his back leg to slow down. While most would go with a hand, a knee, or even a butt, Bourez dropped his back leg off the pad and jammed it into the wave. Weird? Yes. Awesome? You bet.
