Welcome to the 22nd Edition of The Bodyboard Report! 🤙

At Pascuales in July, Pierre Louis Costes drew level with Guilherme Tâmega on 60 career World Tour podiums, the longest standing tally in the sport.

Catch up here if you missed it 👇

A few hours ago today (Thursday) at Cokes in the Maldives, PLC broke the long standing world record.

Career podium number 61. 🦾

But, the ass kicking didn’t stop there!

This day belonged to Pierre! 👇

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Give that man a Bells! Or a Captain… or make him the captain…

PLC was the big dog and the big daddy today! The IBC World Tour landed at Cokes on Thulusdhoo this year, the first time ever at the prestigious wave, after 3 editions held in Malé.

Pierre Louis Costes took the win in an epic final heat against the 2024 world champ Armide Soliveres, making this his second Maldives title after his 2023 result at the old venue in Malé.

Cokes did not disappoint. Great waves rolled through all week, and PLC put the icing on the cake with a super smooth and stylish air forward, followed by a roll and invert, posting the highest score of the entire contest, a perfect 10.

Event winner, with his wife and son cheering from the beach. History made with 61 podium finishes. And a Perfect 10 to rub extra salt in it.

What a show! What a man!

In a sincere interview afterwards, Pierre noted the importance of having his family with him on this trip. When the heart is full, the mind is clear, the focus is sharp, and from that place, a man becomes unstoppable.

Congrats, Pierre.

This day is the culmination of lifelong dedication and well deserved! 🦾

PLC's first podium came in 2007.

That's 19 years at the sharp end of a sport that chews people up and spits them out inside of a decade.

2 x World Champion, 2011 and 2016.

18+ event wins across a career that has taken him from Búzios to Pipe to Nazaré to Frontón.

PLC spent 14 years with Pride Bodyboards before signing a 5 year deal with Morey in 2024, and he still rides for the same reason he always has… because he loves it!

Born in Vichy, raised riding in Casablanca after his family moved to Morocco, now based in Ericeira, Portugal with his wife Rute and their son.

PLC turned pro at 15. Now 36, he is the sole owner of the biggest record in bodyboarding, with time to win more world titles and become a legend.

Time will tell…

Shortly after PLC made history, Namika Yamashita took on Joana Schenker in the women's final. The surf was pumping and this heat produced the best waves of the entire contest.

“The best of the entire window period”, said IBC commentator Bego Martinez.

Speaking of commentary, it was really cool having the one-armed Shark Island legend, Andrew Lester in the commentary box with Bego. The pair made for an enjoyable journey of good waves and sportscasting.

Back to the action, the young Japanese rider snagged the women's title with a convincing win.

What impressed me about Namika is that… uh… always tricky finding the right words when talking about women’s bodies…. but, hey… this is bodyboarding. If I gotta suck in my gut on the beach, everyone else can suck it up.

Namika is quite lean and slender…not so muscular in build, and in theory, as powerful compared to Joana and the stable of South American ladies.

Not only was Namika super whippy with her forward spins to snag the max points after take off, she also smashed through a lip or two that would easily put most tough guys flat on their ass.

Knocking out Brazil's Luna Hardman on route, this was a powerful performance and well deserved win by any measure. 💐

The impact (of the win, not the landing) had a profound effect on the young athlete as she cruised back to base over the reef, wiping the salt water that comes from inside, from her joyful eyes.

What a great moment in bodyboarding!

This is one of those contests worth grabbing your favourite snack and beverage, kicking back, and watching both the entire final heats as there was just a constant exchange of good waves and vibes.

Go to IBC YouTube and scroll to 3:18 to enjoy the men's and women's finals 👇

The Rising Series is the pathway.

Regional events, real ranking points, and a direct route into the big Grand Finals like Gran Canaria's Fronton King, where our sport crowns its next generation.

This week the local kid delivered on the home field.

Eyan Ahmed, a young Maldivian junior who's been grinding away on tour since at least 2023, took the win on the Junior Men Rising Series, right on his home reef.

A kid from Thulusdhoo winning on Cokes, in front of his own crowd, in the same week PLC was making history.

This is the stuff that makes bodyboarding awesome. Legends and locals sharing the same stretch of water, same event, and sometimes, the same headlines.

Continuing our series on custom boards and shapers from last week 👇

Every JL Designs board comes from 1 man, Jimmy Linville, and the story behind it starts on the beach in Oceanside, California.

His buddy Hector was the one who got him hooked, showing him grainy footage of Mike Stewart riding Pipeline. Problem was, Jimmy's board didn't even have a slick bottom yet. So when a friend's uncle turned out to be Bobby Zabad, the man behind BZ, Jimmy bought his first slick bottom Mach 7 7 off him for 80 dollars. That board changed everything.

Not long after, the Morey Boogie contest rolled into Oceanside. Jimmy and his crew ended up sitting on the sand right next to Mike Stewart himself. Watching him and the other top riders turning a bodyboard the way a surfer turns a surfboard was the moment it clicked for an entire generation of Oceanside kids, Jimmy included.

Jimmy's path into shaping wasn't planned, it was earned. He started at BZ, learning the basics of how a board actually comes together. From there he moved to Custom X, where his own design ideas slowly worked their way into the brand's lineup. He kept shaping boards on the side just to make rent, and after 5 or 6 years of that, the leap to going out on his own started to make sense.

JL Designs opened its doors roughly 20 years ago, though Jimmy had already been quietly building his name for years before that. The first week the shop was open, with rent looming, a mate from Hawaii called in a $3k order that covered it. He still credits Custom X as part of that success, and to this day the two still work together.

His whole business philosophy comes down to one idea. Big brands sponsor riders, but corporate staff don't surf, so the word never really spreads. Jimmy built JL Designs by being in the water with his customers instead, which he reckons beats any sponsorship deal for building trust in a small, coastline bound sport like this one.

Ask Jimmy about difficult customers and he'll dodge most of the names, but 1 story always comes out. A rider once brought in a board that was 20 years old and falling apart, obsessing over the exact shade of colour and the stiffness of the stringer. Jimmy offered to build him a brand new one for free. The guy wanted his old board reshaped instead.

Then there's his best friend Dave Long, who once complained his board had reverse rocker in the tail because he kept getting pitched off the lip. Jimmy's response, only half joking, was to tell him to kick harder.

Jimmy owns a CNC cutter, a gift from Tom Morey himself, but he barely uses it. Hand shaping lets him tailor every board to the individual in front of him. A dropknee rider needs a completely different rocker to someone who rides more upright. Big wave riders who lean forward, the way 1986 world champion Ben Severson always has, need extra foam up in the nose to match that stance.

He treats every custom order like a responsibility rather than a transaction. A $300 board is real money to most people, and he says he genuinely loses sleep over getting it right. If he's not in the headspace to focus, headache, bad mood, waves pumping and his mind elsewhere, he won't touch a customer's board that day.

Beyond bodyboards, Jimmy also builds rescue sleds, soft top surfboards, flowboards and lately he's been getting into skimboards too. Outside the shop he's just as serious about fishing as he is about surfing, and he's never once taken a vacation without a board packed.

He never did well in school. Woodshop was the exception, where his first ever project wasn't a birdhouse, it was a skateboard.

30+ years in, still Oceanside, still hand shaping, one board at a time.

and check out the interview with Jimmy on The Reale Deal Show! 👆

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