There’s a reason why surfers who start surfing past the age of say, 15, will never truly get to be world-class surfers. It’s because it’s something you need to start doing young, something that needs be inherently ingrained in your muscles and your psyche.
That’s very apparent already in 14-year-old Koldo Illumbe, a Basque/Balinese ripper who has more tube-sense already than most surfers will ever have. Between Mundaka and Uluwatu, Illumbe’s got the left-hand barrel wrangle fully wired.