This picture of Dan Malloy riding his alaia surfboard is a pretty well known one. What I notice more then anything though is the bluriness of the photo. Meant to highlight the speed at which he's riding, of course, it's not uncommon to find alaia photos look like this and for good reason.
After surfing decent beachbreak on my shortboard for the past couple weeks I decided to go back to my alaia surfboard both yesterday afternoon and today at Swami's, in Encinatas. Yesterday was by far the better of the two but they were both super fun. Since I rode my shortboard yesterday morning at Trestles, I had a good comparison when I hopped on my alaia surfboard later that day at Swami's.
There's definitely benefits to both and the shortboard is much easier to paddle and ride, but the speed you get on an alaia is clearly more than on a shortboard. I had two or three waves on the alaia where I was flying down the line and making sections that some people (I assume that's why they tried to drop in on me from down the line) didn't think I would make. Like I said, benefits to both but as far as speed goes, there's no way I would've made a few of those waves on my shortboard.
Moral of the story: Dan Malloy's and a handful of other alaia surfing photos have that super fast blurred look because they're going super fast. Alaia Surfboards haul.