It’s Jay: For Reale
Jay Reale is a name most bodyboarders are familiar with. An early pioneer of professional bodyboarding, Jay has made a career both in and out of the water riding the foam. Hailing from the USA, he was lucky enough to travel to Australia to compete and met his future wife, Aussie shredder, Vicki. The two have not looked back. They now run successful businesses based around bodyboarding, travel the world, have a family that shares their passion for the ocean and still froth as hard as they did when they were groms.
I was stoked to be able to ask Jay a few questions about his early life on the boog, how he transitioned into the corporate sales world, wave pools and what commentating for the IBC is like.
Take it away Jay……..
How did you first get into bodyboarding and what is one solid memory you have of bodyboarding in the early years?
I started out riding waves on inflatable rafts in Ocean City, Maryland on the US east coast when I was about 10 years old. My family owned a vacation condo there, and we would spend a lot of the summer there. I grew up in the suburbs of Washington, DC.
Eventually we sold that condo and bought a house in Ocean City, and we moved there permanently when I was 16 years old in 1980. I had been introduced to bodyboarding the summer prior to that in 1979, and was hooked, so moving to the beach enabled me to never miss a good swell again.
My fondest memories are of frigid winter sessions when the water temp was 3 or 4 degrees C with snow on the beach, and just having a blast out there.
Share with us what your time was like on the world tour?
The World Tour days were some of the best of my life. The Tour started in 1994 in Portugal and traveling around the planet as a pro bodyboarder was a dream come true for me. Lots of different cultures, and lots of camaraderie with fellow bodyboarders from all over the world, and getting to ride great waves.
What made you transition into the sales side of bodyboarding and did this change your relationship with the sport? If so was it a positive or negative change?
My contract with my major sponsor Morey Bodyboards came to a close at the end of 1998, so the income ended abruptly. I have a university degree to teach science, but I wanted to be involved in the sport still, so Vicki and I decided to start an online bodyboard shop, eBodyboarding.com since the internet was really just beginning to explode.
If anything, it strengthened my relationship with bodyboarding, because now I was able to get new and existing riders into the right gear to give them the same stoke I had been enjoying all my bodyboarding life.
In your opinion, what happened to bodyboarding after its hey days in the 90s-early 2000s?
In my opinion, the rise of digital media changed the landscape of bodyboarding (and everything else). We no longer needed magazines, or DVDs, and people were shopping online more. Promoting brands online was free (Facebook, Instagram, and later TikTok, etc.) which eliminated the need to spend $ to advertise in a print publication, and print was outdated anyway since current bodyboarding content was becoming readily available online immediately and for free. Plus, too many bodyboard brands sprang up and divided up profits too much. As a result, none of the bodyboard brands were making enough $ to sponsor riders or events.
You and your family get to travel a lot and surf in a variety of places, including wave pools. Share with us one of your fave surf destinations and a little about Kelly's wave pool?
We love traveling and take advantage of credit card points to travel quite a bit. We do a family vlog on all of our trips on Youtube called "Keepin' It Reale" if you want to check out our trips, but Tavarua in Fiji is one of our favorite spots on the planet. It's not just the waves, but the staff of Tavarua Island Resort that make coming back feel like "going home" every time we go. We've been doing group trips there since 2018 and everyone is welcome! We also do wave pool trips, and that info is all on our website's "Bodyboarding Travel" page.
Right now we're in Costa Rica with Rob Barber's Bodyboard Holidays, and we are absolutely loving this as well. Rob has a cache of trips worldwide for bodyboarders and has been doing this for more than two decades.
Kelly's Pool, The Surf Ranch is a 5-star experience, and we're going back again in December of this year. It's quite expensive and you don't get many waves, but everything else and the crew of bodyboarders make it unforgettable. Three farm-to-table meals, open bar, appetizers, etc. make you feel like you're at the Four Seasons with one of the best wave pools on earth right there.
What was your experience commentating for the IBC? They get a lot of flack for the quality of their live stream, your addition was a positive one in my opinion!
Thanks. The IBC really has the sport's best interests in mind. The people running it are good people and they take a lot of flack from certain elements of the bodyboarding world. Do they make mistakes? Sure. None of these guys do this for a living. It's a side gig for them, and they are basically a sanctioning body that works with promoters who are putting on the events in their respective locations. Every promoter is different and the IBC has to work with them to make sure they meet the standards and budget required for the IBC to sanction the event. Some promoters are more on top of meeting these requirements than others, and the IBC has to manage that, both the good and bad. There are a lot of moving parts to these events that the public doesn't know about.
As far as my involvement as a webcast commentator, it's always a privilege to be in the commentary booth "back on Tour" like I was 30 years ago and getting to see the world's best riders do their thing. At some events, the days are very long. We're commentating for 8-10 hours straight. Try talking that long and trying to come up with interesting stuff to say for that long day after day and catering to a multi-lingual audience. It's no walk in the park!
What are Jay & Vicki Reales plan for 2024?
Travel is always high on the list for us. We're currently in Costa Rica. From here, we go to El Salvador for a few days. After that, we'll be doing our annual "Tavi Tube Tour" at Tavarua, Fiji for 2 weeks in late February/early March.
The next trip after that is to the WacoSurf wave pool for our 7th edition of our "Texas Tube Tour" trip in early May. Following that, I should be doing a couple of IBC commentating gigs in June in Brazil.
From then, we're pretty flat out at eBodyboarding and our JrGuards.com businesses until late August. We'll see if I end up in the Maldives for the IBC again. That hasn't been decided yet.
Once September hits and business slows down (post-summer), we have more travel plans before the holiday season keeps us close to work again. We're lucky that we have a great small-but-capable staff that takes care of things while we're away and that enables Vicki and I to work remotely.
Check out Jays pod cast on all major providers: The Reale Deal Show (it’s great!)
Photos by Tony Prince
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