In its 2021 Olympic debut in Japan, surfing took place at a nice little beach break, and it made for a fun watch. 2024 has been an entirely different animal. Held at Tahiti’s infamous Teahupoʻo, a storm brought thick, house-sized barrels detonating onto razor-sharp coral reef while the world’s best surfers deliberately put themselves in harm’s way in the quest for gold. But medals weren’t the only hardware on display.

If you’ve been watching the competition, this is likely the first time you’ve seen surfers wearing helmets. Even if you spend a lot of time at the beach, you’ve probably never seen them on surfers before. In round one of the Olympic surf competition, a whopping 17 out of 24 female surfers wore a helmet, and five of the men did, too.

We didn’t have to wait long to see why helmets were so popular. Early in the contest, France’s started without a helmet, then wiped out on her first wave and went headfirst into the reef, splitting her forehead open. She immediately requested a helmet, which staff delivered to her via jet ski and put onto her still-bleeding head. She would later require four stitches, but she was extremely lucky that the impact wasn’t worse. Not everybody has been so fortunate recently.

Check out our coverage of the winning mountain bikes and the at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

A Brief Helmet History

I reached out to team (Lenny is arguably the best big wave surfer in the world), who has some experience with this subject. Earlier this year Lenny went down on a seemingly innocuous wave at Oahu’s famous Pipeline. It was one of the first times he wore a helmet surfing, but something that morning told him it was a good idea.Ìę He ended up driven into the reef with so much force that the impact split his helmet in half. Lenny was somehow able to get himself to shore, but he was badly concussed, and has virtually no memory of the incident. He spent months recovering and dealing with all of the nightmarish brain-injury symptoms you hear about from NFL players. It’s almost certain that and the debate about wearing a surf helmet has picked up since then.

That said, surf helmets aren’t actually all that new. Surfers have been wearing them at hard-bottom breaks since at least the early ‘90s. Australia’s Tom Carroll famously wore a helmet during his dominant performance at the 1991 Pipeline Masters contest. Takayuki Wakita, Naohisa Ogawa, and Atsushi Imamura were a trio of legendary Japanese chargers who all donned helmets. Even more recently, France’s Jeremey Flores and Australia’s Owen Wright each won first place while wearing helmets in the Tahiti Pro (also held at Teahupoʻo) in 2015 and 2019, respectively. So, surf helmet use is by no means unprecedented, but it’s never been common, which is why seeing nearly half of the surfers at the Olympics feels like something of a sea change moment.

The Gath Eva Hat helmet ($169) (Photo: Courtesy Gath)

Anatomy of a Surf Helmet

Broadly speaking, there are two types of surf helmets: Soft and hard-shell. As the name suggests, hard helmets have a plastic shell on the outside with a layer (or multiple layers) of foam underneath. These are more akin to bike helmets and ski/snowboard helmets. Most are uniform round shells for less drag in the water, with significant ports around the ears to prevent water from accumulating there. The soft helmets look a bit more like something you’d see in a martial arts competition. While they’re lighter and more comfortable, they also don’t offer quite as much protection. As far as I could tell, everybody in the Olympics contest was wearing variations of the hard-shell design.

The three biggest players in the surf helmet game are and hard shells, and . Gath helmets look not-unlike bowling balls, with bits of ventilation here and there, and they typically go for $170-$190, depending on the model. They offer solid protection for the top, back, and sides of your head. Simba helmets go a bit further, with helmets that stretch downward from the sides to cover more of the sensitive jawline, which gives them more of an intense gladiator look. They go for about $200. ($79) offers the least protection, but it’s made with a soft, non-absorbent foam to keep it from getting waterlogged. It’s also the lightest and one of the cheapest options.

There are other brands that make surf helmets as well, and it’s not unusual to see kayak-helmets used for surf. Kai Lenny is now developing his own surf helmet, which will have carbon fiber. Like bike helmets, plastic surf helmets are actually designed to break on impact to help diffuse the energy of the blow. Carbon fiber breaks, too, but as it does it distributes the force more evenly around the entire shell, theoretically decreasing the energy transferred to your skull and brain. There’s no word yet on the timing of its release or how much it will cost.

Some Olympians, like Defay, were wearing what appeared to be bike helmets in the lineup, with cutouts all over them for ventilation and drainage. They had some ear coverage, too, so I don’t believe they were literally bike helmets, but the point is any protection may be better than nothing if you’re heading into some heavy water.

To Wear or Not to Wear?

There are a few reasons helmets aren’t ubiquitous at the beach, though. While it’s universal that it’s preferable to have a helmet on if you’re going to hit a hard object such as a reef, a rock, a surfboard, or even a hard-packed sand bottom, those are still thankfully rare occasions. What you are almost guaranteed to encounter in every surf session, however, is turbulence when duck-diving or tumbling in the whitewater, and that’s where surf helmets may actually be a disadvantage. Because they increase the relative mass of your head, that means more torque on your neck when it’s being pushed around underwater, which could potentially increase your chances of getting neck-strain or whiplash. That’s one of the reasons you want to make sure you absolutely nail the sizing, and wear it as tightly yet comfortably as you can. The helmet can act like a sea-parachute and pull your neck back if too much water gets inside.

The other reason is the cool factor, or lack thereof. A lot of surfers are afraid that wearing a helmet will make them look like a kook. It’s worth noting, though, that helmets were practically non-existent at ski resorts through the 1990s, yet now they’re everywhere, regularly worn by pros, and nobody thinks twice when they see them. There were so many notable surf-related brain injuries this year that I think we’ll see more influential pro surfers get on board. Jamie O’Brien, Koa Smith, and Kai Lenny are all notable proponents, and as demand grows, the helmets will continue to evolve and improve.

Personally, I’m going to pick one up myself. I probably won’t wear it on smaller days, or at my local beach break, but the next time I paddle out when it’s big and heavy, and there are lots of rocks around, it will give me peace of mind to have my noggin protected. I actually started snowboarding better once I wore a helmet regularly, so who knows—maybe that will happen in the waves, too.

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My love of surf films goes far beyond the heart-pumping footage of surfers getting barreled and shredding monster waves. I always appreciate hearing them describe what it was like to actually ride the swell. Oftentimes, their soliloquies touch on topics that I care deeply about: spirituality, the connection between brain and body, the emotional release that comes from physical effort, and, ya know, . The very best athletes—think , , Kelly Slater—can talk for minutes on end about a ride that lasted maaaybe 20 seconds.

That’s why I was determined to interview Puerto Rican surfer after watching the of him surfing a wave for five straight minutes—that’s 300 seconds—along a river in Indonesia. The wave, called “The Bono,” is actually a tidal bore that f. The water is pulled along by the gravitational pull of the moon, and the wave it creates just goes on and on and on.

So, how did Graves describe a wave ride that lasted that long?

“It was an insane experience—people talk about the ‘flow state’ during a ride and I had that, only it just went on forever,” Graves told me. “With tidal bores the whole reason you’re able to surf is your spot on the planet at that very moment. So really, you’re in synch with the moon. You have this cosmic connection that makes the ride feel more grand. I felt like I had this antenna up that was picking up on the frequency of the wave. And I was doing what anyone would do with a wave like that—ride the shit out of it.”

During the clip you can see him make 46 different turns on the wave, which could be a new Guinness Record.

Graves, 37, told me he had no intentions of pursuing a record ride at The Bono. Instead, he was indulging in his relatively newfound interest in the tidal bore phenomenon—waves that are created when the rising tide pushes up against a river current. Traditional ocean waves break on a reef or a sandbar, and even the longest ones barely last longer than a minute. Peru’s “,” believed to be the longest breaking ocean wave, covers a distance of 2.5 miles, and a lucky surfer might be up for four minutes.

Tidal bores . But unlike ocean waves, they happen just twice a day, and often just one of those swells is ridable. The season for riding these waves is often short, and determined by the combination of the lunar cycle, height of the water, and shape of the river bottom.

Graves says the surf world has identified approximately 60 bores on the planet. He first got a taste for the experience in 2018 on the Severn River in Southwestern England, where the in the funnel-shaped Bristol Channel.

“It was such a different experience from riding a normal ocean wave that I fell in love with tidal bores,” Graves says. “I found out about the subculture of surfers who only ride tidal bores, and they just look at wave riding differently, and as a surfer the whole thing lit me up.”

He was hooked, and he marveled at the small community of surfers who coalesced around these unusual waves. Surfers on tidal bores and rivers often see how long they can stand on the wave—rides last minutes and sometimes even over an hour.

Graves expanded his focus from ocean waves to tidal bores and even river waves. He traveled to Wyoming and surfed the . He rode the famed French bore near Bordeaux on the River Garonne called “”. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he got the idea to surf The Bono. What enticed him about the wave was how the river bottom and tide created seven distinct peaks, which locals call “Seven Ghosts.”

“The tides go over sand bars and make all of these unique shapes, and the wave speeds up and then slows down and makes all of these secondary waves behind it,” he said. “The sand is always shifting and the river has gotten wider over the years, so when you surf it, it’s really the only way that wave will ever be.”

It’s also incredibly remote, and requires a three-hour boat ride from the nearest town. Graves planned his trip for six months and worked with a local surfing guide who takes clients to the bore. The Bono is only rideable from November though March, because that’s when the biggest tide of the day hits when the sun is out.

The elusive nature of these bores is why Graves believes they will continue to attract a niche community of surfers. But for those who are willing to travel to them and wait for that special moment, the payoff is huge. Graves says he had “that glow” after his five-minute ride.

“It felt similar to getting a really special wave anywhere,” he says. “It feels like you were chosen by such a powerful force that is so raw that you can’t help but feel this crazy lift. It’s like the fountain of youth or something. I think that glow will last the rest of my life.”

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There’s a scene in the second season of HBO’s docuseries 100 Foot Wave in which surf icon Garrett McNamara sits silently on a Hawaiian beach and meditates as his brother-in-law, CJ Macias, does a voiceover. “These days it’s not always clear what Garrett is up to, or what his intention is on any given day,” Macias says. The scene is supposed to illustrate how McNamara, now in his fifties, has finally broken free from his globetrotting pursuit of monster waves—a decades-long addiction that made him famous, nearly killed him, and was the focal point of 100 Foot Wave’s Emmy-winning debut in 2021.

The scene also inadvertently defines the strengths and weaknesses of the series’ second chapter, which airs its penultimate episode this Sunday, May 14, on HBO and HBO Max, before concluding on May 21. Yes, the latest edition of 100 Foot Wave again dazzles viewers with heart-pounding footage of surfers zipping along skyscraper-sized waves in NazarĂ©, Portugal, and explores the emotional connection that they have with their adrenaline-soaked and sometimes deadly profession. But chapter two lacks the singular focus and season-long arc that characterized its debut. It ping-pongs between Portugal, Hawaii, and even Iceland. Some episodes feel more like a hang session with the surfers than a story. Some viewers (myself included) may find themselves echoing Macias’ words as they watch along. During season two, it’s not always clear what the show is up to, or what its intention is during any given episode.

Let’s back up. In the summer of 2021, 100 Foot Wave burst into the HBO streaming queue after creating a buzz on social media with . That first season told the story of how McNamara and his tiny band of misfit surfers developed NazarĂ© from a little-known fishing village into the most famous big-wave surfing destination on the planet. Season one also covered nearly a decade of  McNamara’s life, and explored the psychological stresses that he and other big-wave surfers undergo in their pursuit of the perfect wave. They find unmeasurable joy, but also crash and suffer traumatic injuries, and spend months—sometimes years—battling physical and emotional hardships to try and get back in the water. I checked out season one as a curious surf interloper and was immediately sucked in.

That season’s six-episode arc had a tidy ending in its finale: NazarĂ© hosts a major professional competition in February 2020, and the world’s best big-wave surfers finally get to experience the mythical wave that McNamara helped pioneer. It’s a fitting capstone to the contained story 100 Foot Wave set out to tell, and (in my opinion) one of the reasons why it brought home an Emmy award that year.

Season two covers the 18-month period after Nazaré’s international debut, and captures the pandemic, a few huge storms, and even two different competitions. The six episodes are set chronologically, but you can watch them in any order (except five and six—view those back-to-back) without feeling lost. Rather than simply focusing on McNamara, the series profiles others, among them Frenchwoman , who over the season becomes something of a co-star.

I recently asked McNamara to define season two, and after some thinking, he gave me this answer: “Weaving in other characters, weaving in other stories. The main character started out as NazarĂ© and now it’s the metaphor of the 100-foot wave. Life is a 100-foot wave. Bring that vibration and that frequency to wherever you go and whatever you do.” (You can read my full interview with him here.)

Hey, that works for me. And I understand why McNamara and the series producers chose to tell a broader story, even if the one they bit off didn’t necessarily have a natural arc. Season two opens in the early months of the pandemic, when an October storm in the Atlantic sends a record swell toward NazarĂ©. McNamara, Dupont, and season one star Andrew Cotton ride into the waves alongside a swelling collection of new surfers: local teenaged phenom Antonio Laureano, surfing celebrities Lucas “Chumbo” Chianca and Kai Lenny, Brazilian couple Michelle Des Boullions and Ian De Cosenza, and others. Footage shows the water churning with jet skis towing surfers—a visible contrast to the empty waves featured in season one.

The rocky coastline above Nazaré’s churning water has also changed. Thousands of fans crowd the fortress overlooking the ocean to watch the action, giving the surf spot the feel of a Roman coliseum. They cheer, gasp, and recoil in horror as the surfers angle down waves and get swallowed by deadly whitewater. The scene is a visible cue that NazarĂ© has indeed been discovered by the masses—thus, it’s time for 100 Foot Wave to tell a new story with a different focus. In subsequent episodes, the series heads to Oahu to explore the legendary break Jaws. It discusses the challenging personal dynamics that often exist between a surfer and his or her jet-ski driver. And it dives into the dangerous combination of ego and blind ambition that sometimes leads to disaster in the water.

My overall takeaway from the new season is still unquestionably positive, and the show is absolutely worthy of your attention. The show profiles new surfers, and the series expands its focus to other big-wave destinations. Plus, improved camerawork and technology provides dizzying and fresh vantages of the heaving ocean that may leave you searching for your sea legs. And don’t even get me started on the Philip Glass score, which has all of the energy and complexity of .

I suppose the one consistent through-line in this varied storytelling is McNamara and his family. He and his wife, Nicole, navigate the choppy seas created by his lifestyle. They have another child. He surfs mega waves while she watches for danger from the shore, and together they attempt live as regular parents.

McNamara, sporting a head of gray hair, grapples with his aging body, which after decades of surgeries and crashes, no longer has the power to withstand the most ferocious wipeouts. When I completed 100 Foot Wave season two, I thought that perhaps it was McNamara’s struggles with Father Time was the missing arc that I was searching for. Perhaps the focus of season two was actually the aging gladiator finally turning his back on the ocean, I thought.

When I spoke to him on a call, I realized that this storyline was far from over. He told me he was again training to surf monster swells.

“My body is going to be way better than it’s ever been in a month—I’ll probably be in the best shape of my life in a month,” McNamara told me. “I kinda got a little desire, a little more hunger for a few more big waves.”

Turns out not every story needs a beginning, middle, and end.

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Garrett McNamara has long held celebrity status within the surfing world for riding gargantuan waves. In 2021, he became a household name with a much wider audience when HBO aired its surfing docuseries 100 Foot Wave.ÌęThe six-part show profiled McNamara’s pursuit of dangerous swells, and showcased the physical and emotional turmoil he suffered from the crashes and wipeouts. The series also documented McNamara’s work to develop the heaving break at NazarĂ©, Portugal into a global destination for adrenaline seekers. HBO for the project.

100 Foot Wave returned for a second season this spring (you can read our review here), and again focused on McNamara. The series airs its fifth of six episodes this coming Sunday, May 14, before airing its finale on May 21. We caught up with McNamara to discuss the origins of the series, and why he’s still chasing that perfect ride on a skyscraper-sized mountain of water.

OUTSIDE: Many of the other big-wave films I’ve watched are focused on legend creation—on building surfers into larger-than-life figures. 100 Foot Wave makes you and other surfers seem vulnerable, emotional, and very human.Ìę
MCNAMARA: Well, our first goal with it was to do something that was inspirational. We expressed that very often in all of the meetings leading up to this journey with [executive producers] Chris Smith and Joe Lewis. The other goal was to bridge the gap between regular people and surfing fans. There’s such a small amount of surfers in the world. We wondered: How do we invite the rest of the world on this journey? One of the biggest things Nicole and I pushed hard on was to show very little surfing in the film—to only show the biggest waves or worst wipeouts or the craziest jet ski crashes from each session. I wanted casual viewers to stay on the channel, and once you show too many waves, even if it’s giant ones, they’re going to turn the channel. But if you make sure you have a good story in the background, or a really good story leading up to those waves, then you’ll keep the viewer in there. And it’s working.

You invite the cameras into very intimate moments—the birth of your child is even captured on film. How did you balance what you wanted and didn’t want to show from your private life? 
We liked to have our cameraman live with us as part of the family, so that way they are ready for whatever. And our philosophy is: ‘Whatever you get you can use and share.’ Even if it’s my wife yelling at me, or me being on the phone too long, that’s our life. To be honest, it’s definitely challenging to film certain moments. But we never retake or ask if we can do it over again, even if it’s a shot that might portray only half of what actually happened. It’s all exactly what happened, and then the editors put it together how they feel works best. Most of the footage is arranged in exact timelines, exactly as it happened. The stuff you see up the cliff, with Nicole and others using walkie talkies to talk to me in the water—we never recreate any of that. Everything is just real. I think that’s why it speaks to so many people.

Why do a second season? What stories did you have left to tell?
We had so much good footage—they could have done three or four, maybe even five seasons with everything we gave them from just season one. There were so many stories, so many crazy things that happened, and it was all captured. So I had a strong belief that we were going to get a second season, because the story was so good. And then when they came out with the first season, I was like, “Holy shit yeah, we are definitely going to get a second season.” But you never know until they say yes, and usually you wait until the end of the season to find out. I think it was like after episode two or three that we found out we got the green light for a season two. We were already filming when we found out because we knew we were going to do some kind of project, even if HBO didn’t want it. And you know what, they gave us the green light for season three. They did that about six months ago.ÌęEditor note: HBO representatives declined to confirm season 3.Ìę

Congratulations. I would assume you must be filming season three at the moment then.Ìę
They just started thinking of storylines, so we won’t be filming for another six months or so.

I know that measuring wave height is a general estimation, and that the actual size of waves is often debated. With that in mind, why did you call the series 100 Foot Wave?
To be honest, at first I was like, ‘What the heck are you guys doing with this name? Please do not name it this. Make it The Road to NazarĂ© or something cool and inspirational.’ And lo and behold, 100 Foot Wave was the best title you could have ever chosen. It is super for a few reasons. Number one: 100 Foot Wave is a name that gets the world interested. Number two: Search engines put numbers before letters, so it was on top of all of the streaming queue. It was the best title you could ever come up with. You see, I had been filming for six months before we got in touch with HBO. There’s a hard drive with another six months of footage, and we were going to call the project Waterman: The Quest for the 100 Foot Wave. But it never went anywhere. After a while, the title turned into more of a metaphor. It turned into more of life as 100-foot wave. Everybody has their own 100-foot wave, whether it’s going into a boardroom, or walking down the street, or taking care of your kids.

One arc that takes us from season one through season two is you grappling with your age, and how you no longer have the desire to chase big swells across the globe. Why do you think this changed happened? 
I’m in a spot with surfing where, if I’m in Tahiti or Hawaii or Portugal and a big swell pops up, and if I’m feeling up to it, then I’ll definitely surf it. But I don’t feel a strong desire to just go chasing the waves across the world. I feel more of a desire to let it come to me. Wait for the waves and work on being the best version of myself physically, mentally, and spiritually. I think for me the biggest difference is physical. There’s this possibility of injury, and after my 2017 shoulder injury I allowed myself to be afraid and to become concerned about getting injured again. But right now I’m on this crazy program where I’m starting to biohack with my diet, and my body is probably going to be way better than it’s ever been in about a month. I just surfed the Cortez Bank this year, and I came home and surfed the Eddie swell in Hawaii, and I got really excited. So who knows? I could keep going forever. If I’m 75 and the biggest swell of the year is coming at me and it’s glassy, I will still try to ride some waves. Maybe even when I’m 95. I just want to be ready. So, one day when the 100-foot wave shows up, I’ll be on it.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.Ìę

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Luke Shepardson took a break from his busy work schedule to win one of pro surfing’s most prestigious competitions.

No, really.

Shepardson, 27, is a lifeguard with the City and County of Honolulu, and on Sunday he was . But Shepardson is also a top surfer, and had secured an invitation Sunday’s Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational, the Super Bowl for big-wave surfers that hadn’t been held since 2016. Shepardson worked his shift, and then paddled out into the thumping swell at Waimea Bay to participate in the event. He rode a series of monster waves—including a 30 footer—to record the highest score, earning 89.1 of a possible 90 points. He nudged defending champ John John Florence out for the win.

In a scene that appeared even too weird for Hollywood, a wide-eyed Shepardson stood on the stage clad in his work uniform—yellow lifeguarding shirt and red board shorts—to accept his win.

“I told myself I’m in it because I can win it,” Shepardson told a local TV news reporter, looking dazed. “That’s what I was telling myself all day. Super scary, waves were huge. It’s a dream come true to be a part of the Eddie, to just be on the alternate list, and then to be in it, I can’t believe it, f—— crazy.”

Shepardson then added that his workday wasn’t over—he had to get back to the lifeguard tower.

Honolulu City & County Lifeguard Luke Shepardson wins the 2023 Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational Championship ' caught up with the champ following the announcement Stay 2/ for more coverage throughout the evening

— Rob DeMello (@RobDeMelloKHON)

The storybook ending was a fitting one for the competition—known affectionately as “The Eddie” in surfing circles—due to its historical ties to lifesaving. Part surf tournament, part cultural event, the competition’s namesake, legendary Hawaiian surfer Eddie Aikau, is said to have been the first lifeguard to patrol the island’s dangerous North Shore. He died in 1978 while attempting to save the crew of a canoe, and the Aikau family began the competition in 1984 as a way to honor his memory. But the competition is only held when the waves top 20 feet at Waimea Bay for a long enough duration for top pros to arrive—conditions that require just the right combination of swell, wind, and sunshine. The 2023 event marked just its tenth edition since its origin.

Yesterday North Shore on-duty lifeguard Luke Shepardson won the Eddie at in front of his home crowd What a memorable day of surfing celebrating the legacy of Eddie Aikau

⁊⁩

— Gary Surfer (ret) (@gary_icloud)

Historically, the competition gives surfers 48 hours to get to Hawaii if the waves are good enough. That hadn’t happened for seven years, and it looked like the 2023 edition might be a bust as well. Shortly after the event announced in early January it would run this year, organizers called it off after the forecasted swell looked smaller than expected. Organizers delayed the event from January 10 until January 22.

The delay allowed the hype to reach a fever pitch, and according to multiple reports, approximately 50,000 spectators lined the beach at Waimea Bay to take in the waves. The lineup of surfers was equally as impressive, with Florence, father-and-son duo Mason and Michael Ho, and big-wave champions Billy Kemper and Kai Lenny, among others.

“We’ve all had the Eddie Aikau posters in our rooms growing up, so to have the opportunity to actually go out there for Eddie and his ohana, the Aikaus, was a dream come true for me,” Lenny .

These days, the Aikau family hand picks the surfers invited to compete. According to the , Shepardson was among three lifeguards selected, alongside Dave Wassel and Joe Cadiz.

The 2023 edition marked a historic first for the competition—six women were invited to surf: Makani Adric, Paige Alms, Justine Dupont, Emily Erickson, Keala Kennelly, and Andrea Moller. Kennelly was an alternate to participate in the 2016 edition, but 2023 marked the first bonafide lineup of women surfers. Moller paddled into a breaking swell during the first set to become the first woman to catch a wave in the event’s history. K Mindy Pennybacker, a columnist with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser,Ìę that surfing culture has assumed that Waimea was simply too dangerous for female surfers.

“To see women—not only women surfing Waimea but women and men sharing the same event together, with mutual respect and equality—I’m just really thrilled at the thought,” Pennybacker said.

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Brazilian surfer Marcio “Mad Dog” Freire died Thursday while riding winter swell in NazarĂ©, Portugal. The news was reported by on Thursday evening.

Freire, 47, was reportedly practicing tow-in surfing when he fell from his board and died. According to a statement from Portugal’s National Maritime Authority, rescuers located Freire in the water and brought him to the beach where lifeguards administered CPR, but were unable to revive him. Authorities have not released Freire’s official cause of death.

“The rescuers found that the victim was in cardio-respiratory arrest,” read a statement from the agency. “After several attempts, it was not possible to reverse the situation.”

One of the stars of Brazilian big-wave surfing, Freire rose to prominence in early 2000s alongside countrymen Yuri Soledade and Danilo Couto. The three men earned the nickname “mad dogs” for paddling into the swells at famed Hawaiian big-wave surf spot Pe’ahi, or Jaws. In 2015, film director Roberto Sudart chronicled their exploits in a documentary called “.”

Multiple surfers honored Freire online after learning of his death.

“Márcio was a very experienced surfer. I have long admired him for his courage and technique,” wrote Brazilian star Lucas “Chumbo” Chianca on Instagram. “He was a paddle surf pioneer in Jaws something of which very few surfers are capable. Without a doubt, he is a huge loss to our sport and surfing’s future generations.”

According to multiple outlets, the tragedy marks the first death of a tow-in surfer at Praia do Norte, the famed surf break at NazarĂ© that has risen to prominence over the past decade. Profiled in the 2020 HBO documentary 100 Foot Wave,ÌęNazarĂ© has become a global destination for the world’s top big-wave surfers due to the huge swells rolling in off the North Atlantic. In 2011 American Garrett McNamara rode a wave at NazarĂ© estimated to be 78 feet tall, and images of the ride attracted the collective gaze of the surfing world.

In 2020 the World Surf League launched a tow-in surfing competition at the break, furthering its reputation as a hotbed for massive waves.

Other surfers have suffered accidents in Prata do Norte. In 2013 Brazilian surfer Maya Gabeira was hospitalized after she fell from her board and was held under the water until she was unconscious. In 2020 Portuguese surfer Alex Botelho nearly drowned during the Nazaré Tow Surfing Challenge. Botelho, 32, was hospitalized after the accident and spent months undergoing physical therapy to recover. In 2022 he filed a lawsuit against the World Surf League over the incident.

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As multiple atmospheric rivers pummel the Pacific Coast, Californians have been watching their coastline change shape—and surfers have been hunting down sheltered spots to take advantage of the swell. While the biggest waves came Thursday, the National Weather Service (NWS) extended a high-surf warning, which was originally set to expire at 9 A.M. Friday, to 9 P.M. this evening (though it was downgraded to an advisory).

The NWS warned that waves could be between 15 and 25 feet, but surf forecasting website Surfline reported wave heights up to 35 feet. In , the storm has produced , particularly from Santa Barbara through northern San Diego County. But up north, the weather has mostly wreaked havoc.

In Santa Cruz County, a historic cement ship that has been anchored for nearly 100 years at Seacliff State Beach was , and the nearby Aptos pier collapsed.

BREAKING – The iconic cement ship in Santa Cruz County broke away this morning from the pier at Seacliff State Beach. Waves are HUGE, between 25-35 feet, according to Surfline. Largest swell of the winter. The ship keeps getting hammered.

— Amy Larson (@AmyLarson25)

Aptos Pier collapsing in the

— Adrienne (@HolaAdrienne)

Just up the coast, the popular wharf in the town of Capitola was split in half by a wave.

BREAKING: Capitola Wharf was split in half when a section of the wharf collapsed into the ocean. 30-foot waves, powerful tidal surges, and gusty winds are battering the beaches right now. Capitola Village is flooded.
(Video by Autumn Rose Purdy)

— Amy Larson (@AmyLarson25)

Capitola Beach and Pier are under siege with tide and surf still rising.

— sports business (@soulfocussports)

Flooding—both on the coast and inland—is a major concern with this weather event, and have been closed due to high water levels. But, on the plus side, the is at a ten-year high.

The post Huge Waves Are Demolishing California’s Coastline appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

I don’t envy adventure filmmakers in 2022, tasked with the nearly impossible job of delivering a story that their audience hasn’t seen before. Back in the day, when Warren Miller first started releasing shred flicks, all a filmmaker had to do was point a camera at someone skiing a steep face, overlay the footage with some peppy music, and ±čŽÇŸ±±ôĂ , the audience was impressed.ÌęNow you can’t open Instagram without seeing a mountain biker riding across a slackline 2,000 feet above the ground or a climber free soloing a glass skyscraper. How many clips of gnarly Alaskan ski descents have you seen this year alone? In 2018, the entire world watched a pro climber achieve the pinnacle of his sport on camera in an Oscar-winning film. How do you follow that if you want to make a climbing movie? It’s become increasingly hard to stand out, as adventure films continue to infiltrate mainstream media and audiences.

Nobody is more aware of this challenge than brothers Todd and Steve Jones, the founders and co-directors of Teton Gravity Research (TGR), which has been on the forefront of adventure media for nearly 30 years. TGR has made iconic ski films full of big lines, and visually groundbreaking mountain biking features. They’ve also produced nuanced, narrative documentaries about legends,Ìęlike surfer Andy Irons and skier Lindsey Vonn. They’ve ridden the evolutionary wave of adventure media from scrappy short films for hardcore fans to large productions intended for mainstream audiences. This week they’re releasing a four-part docuseries on HBO and HBO Max called (the first episode premieres tonight, July 12, at 9 P.M. Eastern). It seems to speak directly to the storytelling conundrum modern adventurers and filmmakers are facing in creating something people will pay attention to—the Jones brothers found the most elite athletes in their respective sports and followed them to the furthest corners of the world to accomplish feats that no person has attempted before. In the end, though, the superhuman feats aren’t what made the series worth watching.

In the first hour-long episode, snowboarding legend Jeremy Jones leads a team to Alaska to grab the first descent of Mount Bertha in Glacier Bay National Park. In the second installment, world-class expedition kayakers Ben Stookesberry, Nouria Newman, and Erik Boomer try to run the ridiculously remote Chalupas River through the heart of Ecuador. Next, all-time-great rock climber Emily Harrington and her husband, alpinist Adrian Ballinger, attempt the first individual free ascent of a vertical granite wall in Kyrgyzstan. (A group of four completed the first free ascent of the wall, Pik Slesova’s Northwest Face, in 2019.) And in the final film, big wave surfers Ian Walsh and Grant Baker track down massive swells on the west coast of South Africa. The locations are nearly impossible to get to and each adventure is mind bendingly difficult.

“It’s probably one of the harder projects I’ve ever worked on,” says Todd. “All of the missions were first attempts, so we were really pushing the boundaries. We were deep off the grid, with very little beta on these wild, raw places. It took all of the skills we had developed over the last 28 years to pull this off.”

I believe it. Watching screeners of the first three installments, I lost count of the number of times I wondered how the hell the camera crew captured such incredible footage. In the first episode, you watch Jones, former U.S. Olympic snowboarder Elena Hight, and The North Face-sponsored big mountain skier Griffin Post take a boat deep into Glacier Bay National Park, only to hike 15 miles to basecamp through a blizzard while toting their gear on sleds. And that’s just the approach. After the snowstorm lifts, they sit at basecamp and watch 200 separate avalanches fall over the course of 12 hours on the very mountain they were hoping to ski, a sketchy line with 7,000 vertical feet of no-fall-zone turns. “The main character of this expedition was Mother Nature,” says Jones. “We were forced to deal with one historical weather event after another. The trip was my most ambitious to date due to the remoteness and scale of the objective.“

For my money, Stookesberry, Newman, and Boomer’s river descent in the second installment is the standout. The expedition itself is nuts: the three paddlers are attempting the first descent of the Chalupas River, which drops 10,000 vertical feet in 50 miles, creating one of the steepest, most technical whitewater rivers in the world. And it’s set inside a national park so remote, it doesn’t even have a ranger on staff. I can tell you that nothing goes well without giving too much away. The athletes have to schlep loaded kayaks through the dense jungle on multi-day portages. There are machete accidents and jungle rot. At one point, it takes them a full day to move a mile down river. As their situation gets more intense, watching how each of them wrestles with the ratio of risk and reward, and discovering whether they’ll pull through as a team, makes it more than a good adventure film. It makes it a good film,Ìęperiod.

And therein lies the real secret of this series. Yes, the athletes are the best in the world at their respective sports, and the expeditions they’ve chosen are almost stupid in their difficulty. And yes, the cinematography is mind-blowing. But the athletic feats are almost a sideshow in this series. The films are at their most compelling when they focus on the human element of the expeditions. What happens when you and your partners disagree on the amount of risk ahead of you? What happens when you’re half way through a 43-mile donkey-supported approach hike, nearing the big wall you’ve spent years planning to climb, and someone tests positive for COVID-19? As viewers, we might start one of these films because of the dramatic scenery and athletic accomplishments, but we’ll keep watching because of the people and their relationships on the screen.

The Jones brothers understand this. “It’s an evolution of our documentary filmmaking,” Todd says. “Because we’re making these films for a mainstream audience, as opposed to a core action sports film audience, we have to tell the story in a more in-depth way, so you can suck a viewer in who knows nothing about these sports.” In 2022, athletic prowess and cool camera angles are a dime a dozen. TGR succeeds with Edge of the Earth because they’re able to mine the human aspect of these expeditions for storytelling gold.

The post In HBO’s ‘Edge of the Earth,’ the Best Athletes Attempt the Craziest Feats in the Most Remote Places appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

When Hawaiian pro surfer paddles for a wave at famed break Banzai Pipeline on Oahu’s North Shore, her heart races. At the takeoff point, the wave pitches up steeply, anywhere from six to 20 feet above the shallow reef. Wong knows that any mistake will almost certainly send her into what lies below.

Dropping from the sky, Wong slices her board’s rail into the wave’s face and sets her line. When all goes well, she passes unscathed through Pipeline’s magic tunnel and speeds out the other side in a torrent of spray.

“When you get barreled out there, it’s just the best feeling ever,” Wong says. “The wave has this hold on me and there’s nothing better than surfing Pipe and getting a sick barrel.”

One of the most beautiful and deadly waves in the world, Pipeline has fired the imaginations of surfers for generations. Every winter the world’s best surfers converge on the lineup to test their courage and try to score the barrel of their life. This week, it’s the site of history. Eighteen female professional surfers are competing in the first ever women’s Billabong Pro Pipeline, the opening event in the 2022 World Championship Tour.

The event runs January 29 through February 10.

The world’s best male surfers have competed in the Pipeline Masters event since 1971, but women have rarely had the opportunity to surf in organized events there due to a combination of funding problems, sexism, and the sport’s slow progression. Over the years multiple women have tried to speed up that process. In 1989, pro surfer “Banzai” Betty Depolito started a lower-tier contest for women at the break. The competition was originally for bodyboarders, because at the time there were not enough women surfing Pipeline, Depolito says.

After six seasons Depolito added a surfing competition, but she could never obtain permits from the local government to hold her event during the peak winter season, when the waves are biggest.

“The guys around here have not been very supportive,” Depolito says. “They freak out if they lose a contest or they feel like something’s being taken away from them. It’s mainly because they think they’re so much better and they’re men and they have to feed their families. But we have to pay our mortgages too.”

Few women ventured into the wave’s hypercompetitive lineup back then. Retired pro Rochelle Ballard, 50, a Pipeline pioneer, tried to convince her peers to paddle out and found few takers. Ballard and fellow pro Keala Kennelly surfed the wave alongside a horde of men.

“I didn’t think it was going to happen until now, because it’s like, ‘You guys have to go surf it, or it’s never going to happen,’” Ballard says. “It wasn’t ever about me. It wasn’t ever about Keala—it had to be a bigger group of women at the time and the age that a Pipeline contest came.”

During the winter months, storms spin up in the North Pacific and form swells that, after traveling through the deep waters of the open ocean, explode on the shallow reef at Pipeline. The contours of the reef give the wave its famous cylindrical shape. Sitting in the lineup, a surfer can go left or right, depending on the swell direction, her skill level, and her inclination. The right is known as Backdoor, while the left is Pipeline proper. The wave’s power, the shallow water over the reef, the steep takeoff, the way the peak shifts with the tide and swell direction, all add up to the danger and difficulty of surfing Pipeline.

“It’s such a vertical drop, the way the wave jacks up right where you have to take off. That alone is just really intimidating,” says Kennelly, 43, who started surfing Pipeline in the 1990s. “And then it breaks on gnarly shallow reef.”

A good swell draws some of the world’s best surfers, as well as the most dedicated locals on the planet, and the lineup can be more competitive during a freesurfing session than it is during a contest heat. Women can often find themselves at a disadvantage in the predominantly male lineup.

Wong has sometimes spent six hours in the water at Pipeline to ride a single wave. Some days, she won’t get a wave at all.

“You can feel the vibe out there,” Wong says. “Everyone’s aggressive, everyone’s anxious, everyone’s stressing a little bit. It’s not calm and relaxed at all.”

The absence of a top-level contest for women has meant little incentive for pro surfers to paddle out at Pipeline. Instead, women have pushed boundaries on other waves. Carissa Moore, the reigning Olympic champion, recently landed one of the biggest airs ever in a women’s contest heat at Australia’s Rip Curl Newcastle Cup. But Moore has had little reason to risk it all out at Pipeline until now.

The addition of a women’s Championship Tour event at Pipeline continues a steady progression toward greater equity in pro surfing. In 2019 the World Surf League—the governing body for pro surfers—began paying women equal prize money. A woman winning a single event on the Championship Tour in 2019 won more in prize money than seven-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore earned for her first title in 2007.

Another improvement has been the WSL’s move to hold women’s events when the waves are at their peak. In previous years it was common to see organizers run the women’s heats in smaller conditions. These days women often surf the same day as the men.

That wasn’t the case for the opening weekend at the Pipeline Pro, however. On Saturday, January 29, the men kicked off the competition in thumping ten- to 12-foot waves. Rather than send the women’s heats out into the surf, the WSL waited until Sunday. The inaugural women’s heats took place in noticeably smaller conditions.

Jessi Miley-Dyer, the WSL’s head of competition, said she made the call to delay the women’s heats.

“Pipeline is the most competitive and challenging lineup in the world, and for many of the women on the Championship Tour, Sunday was their first time out in the lineup on their own,” Miley-Dyer says. “It was important to me that we had a day in manageable conditions to allow everyone the opportunity to get a feel for being out in the lineup and experience the wave.”

Miley-Dyer said the competition would seek out bigger conditions for the women’s later rounds. On Tuesday the swell surged to an even greater size, but the WSL again held heats for only the men.

In a post-heat interview, Wong said she’d have preferred to surf the same conditions as the men, but in their social media posts, most of her competitors seemed happy to make it through the opening day. “First heat of the first event of the season is always a little nerve-wracking, and a little extra today figuring out the Pipe lineup with only two women out,” Moore wrote on Instagram.

The first day saw top surfers Courtney Conlogue and Caroline Marks eliminated. Competition is likely to return later this week, with 16 women competing in a single-elimination format.

Moore, a five-time world champion, is a heavy favorite to win. But she says victory at Pipeline is hardly guaranteed.

“I’m not going to lie, I’m a little nervous,” she said in December. “Those kinds of waves are a little out of my comfort zone.”

While Moore may still feel nervous at the thought of paddling out at Pipeline, video of her surfing the wave in January showed her looking comfortable in the barrel. Moore is also among the few women in the contest who can go either left or right. That’s because learning to ride Pipeline backside—with the surfer’s back to the wave—adds another level of mastery.

“She surfs Pipe amazingly,” Kennelly says. “She’s always like, ‘I’m so intimidated,’ and then she goes out and kills it.”

Brazilian Tatiana West, who grew up in Kauai and is currently ranked number two in the world rankings, is another hard-charging surfer who could challenge Moore for the win.

And then there is Wong, who as a wild card may lack the world titles but has the expertise to go far. Now 23, she’s been surfing Pipeline consistently for the past five years, putting in her hours and learning the intricacies of the wave. She’s become a specialist out there and is widely considered to be the best woman yet to surf Pipeline.

Ballard, who keeps close tabs women’s surfing, compares Wong’s style to that of Pipeline legend Gerry Lopez.

“Moana is the first woman that I’ve seen who really understands how to set her line and her rail and stay in the pocket, drive through the barrel and come out,” Ballard says. “And she picks the right waves, that are the same waves that Gerry Lopez was picking. She’s really the one.”

The post Women Surfers Can Finally Compete at Pipeline Pro appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

For more than 60 years, the Hawaiian island of Oahu has beckoned surfers hoping to drop into some of the world’s biggest waves. The result has been many epic rides, all kinds of brutal wipeouts, and the occasional harrowing rescue. In each case, the experience and skills of those involved can make all the difference. And of course, there’s sheer luck. In this replay of one of our favorite episodes from a couple winters ago, we hear the story of a young lifeguard who set out to prove himself in the legendary swells of Sunset Beach, followed by the tale of a hard-charging North Shore local who started training surfers to save each other, only to find himself in desperate need of a rescue.

This episode is brought to you by Tracksmith, maker of high-performance products for amateur athletes striving to be their best. Learn more about its No Days Off collection, designed for winter training, at .

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