Passions: It can take hours of effort for a few seconds of weightlessness

The pursuit of the frontside top turn keeps me coming back to the waves, writes Roger Cox

The sport of surfing offers a huge and varied menu of manoeuvres, but for as long as I can remember there’s only really been one that I'm all that bothered about: the frontside top turn.

In that respect I suppose I’m a lot like an embarrassing dad at a disco: just the one dance move, but happy to keep doing it all night long.

Imagine you’re trimming across the face of a wave, gradually building up speed as you fly down the line. You’re riding frontside – ie. with your face to the wave and your back to the beach – which makes it nice and easy to keep an eye on the liquid racetrack unfolding ahead of you.

Unidentified surfer enjoying a brief moment of weightlessness at Thurso East PIC: Roger Cox / The Scotsman

A slight check onto your heels sends you down towards the bottom of the wave; then a pivot off your toes – a bottom turn – and you’re travelling rapidly back up the face of the wave again, heading for the lip. Do nothing at this point, and chances are your momentum will simply carry you up and over the top of the wave. End of ride. Not what you’re after. If you lean back, though, dig in your heels and throw your leading arm around in a nice wide arc, your board should follow, and you’ll enjoy a brief, magical moment of weightlessness as you bank off the top of the wave before gravity takes over again.

It’s an addictive feeling but it’s gone in the blink of an eye, and – for an average surfer like me, anyway – a couple of half-decent top turns on a wave counts as a result.

That makes the ratio of effort to fun pretty unfavourable – on a good day, a couple of hours of paddling into position, paddling for waves, missing waves and falling off waves might only equate to a few seconds of that weightless feeling.

This at least partly explains why so many surfers fall in love with snowboarding.

Find yourself a bit of mountain that’s shaped like a wave and you can smash as many frontside top turns as you like. Doesn’t matter if you fall either, because you can simply hop on a ski lift, make your way back to the same wave-shaped bit of snow and do it all over again. And again. And again. Is the sensation the same on snow? Not quite, but it’s definitely the next-best thing.