Four years after Volcom announced a $10,000 prize for the first surfer to pull off a kick-flip on video, Santa Cruz surfer Zoltan Torkos has done just that, as you can see in the video above. He, and everyone else, figured he had just made himself $10k richer. However, Volcom Surf Team manager Jack Morrissey, said not so fast:
“Basically, since the the kickflip was a mid-face one, were he didn’t come off the lip he’s not eligible for the grand prize of ten thousand dollars. Even though it was the first kickflip pulled in surfing, it wasn’t off the lip like a proper air, you know? We’ve had a lot of guys send in over the years and we feel it wouldn’t be fair to them because they’ve been trying to do it off the lip. We obviously want to help him out, hype him up for what he’s done. It’s just the fact of the rules.”
For his part Zoltan took the news that he was $10k broker than he thought he would be, in true mellow surfer fashion, telling Stab Magazine that he mainly wanted to pull off the historic trick to name it after his friend who was murdered recently. And though he probably doesn't, I'd like to imagine that Zoltan talks exactly like this guy because that'd be AWESOME.
