The Wahoo Flowbarrel

Bahrain Will Blow Your Mind

The South African IFC Team were invited out to Bahrain, a 45 minute flight from Dubai for the grand opening of Wahooo! Waterpark. We were greeted after our 13 hour travel by a sheik… Hussein Sheik. Hussein was our driver and at 4am in the morning it was great to have such a friendly bloke pick us up. We set off to Sagaya towers, our residence for the week. This is where all the staff stay so it was nice to hang out with the locals for a few days in-between our time off from riding the left FlowBarrel.

Wahoo is located in the City Centre mall, and after a bit of rest Hussein took us to check it out. We got a good feel of the place and after meeting Tom and Tim – the operational managers as well as Damien the GM, we went to view the waterpark. As soon as we saw the wave Tim said to us, “go kill it guys…’’, so we did just that. The Wave is really soft and throws nicely with a deep barrel, making it easy to set up for airs. It didn’t take long to come to grips with and feels really similar to the left at Sentosa. After a few hours of riding, signing autographs and posing for pictures we headed to Burger King for some grub. Coming from South Africa we don’t get BK so it was a true treat for us all. You Americans don’t know how lucky you are.

We went over our wave show that afternoon with Tim, the WavePark operations manager. The grand opening launch was that evening and the king of Bahrain’s son was a guest of honor. We had to get our routine down so that we were all ready to rock ‘n roll for the prince. The 11 year old Sheik got a private show from us to open the wave and got the prestigious honour of turning on the wave on live TV. That was just so cool, to be in the presence of a future king of a country, besides the fact that he had over 40 security guards. He loved our performance and I think was gutted that he could not ride with us.

We spent the next three days training the staff on safety procedures, teaching them how to ride and hanging out with the guests of the waterpark. We got some time off to ride the water slides in the indoor park. It’s all temperature controlled so despite the temperature outside being 20ºC, the inside was like a sauna at 30ºC plus. They have some amazing slides. The Master Blaster  is similar to one of the slides at WildWadi in Dubai. It was so much fun chasing each other around. Another rad one is the Side Winder, which is basically an enormous halfpipe. The takeoff is exactly like the roll to the vert ramp in the Wave House Durban Skatepark: super steep and the air drop was insane. Such good times were had!

We met a few riders from Australia, Sean and Jason. These guys are the personal chefs for the King, so they earn big cash. They live on the king’s premises and even get to attend all the prestigious events like inaugurations and weddings.

We had a few nights out with some of the managers and shared a few laughs over some drinks and some serious chats about the future of flowriding. We had a good night out at Cocoon Lounge, everyone wanted to drink Springboks, a shot named after the South African Rugby team. We also met an absolute legend named Leonard who took us out to a club called Wranglers. That was quite the night out.

We witnessed some pretty crazy stuff on the trip, including a bizarre engagement. We were chilling out in a bar when from nowhere this guy took out a ring, put it on his girlfriend’s finger and raised her hand in the air like a prizefighter in a boxing ring and said, “look guys, we’re engaged. Let’s drink!” Hopefully the shock and surprise on our faces didn’t bum the couple out. It was truly something…quite bizarre actually…

The whole experience was awesome and we look forward to going back in the near future. The staff showed a lot of potential to be flowboarding superstars. They’re highly motivated and amped on mixing it up with riders from around the world at the next IFC.
I’m excited to see how far they’ve come the next time I get to flow with one of the Wahoo boarders. Their goal is to get some really talented riders out there and field a team for the 2010 IFC. I think the king would be very stoked on that and i’m certain the prince would be super stoked! Maybe they could host the IFC next year?