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How do you determine who wins The Eddie? Is it the biggest wave or the steepest and deepest take-off? Is getting to the bottom enough, or do you have to ride clear of the whitewater avalanche for maximum scores? Should length of ride play a part if you act like a skimming stone through the middle section and go maverick on the shorey? Should the highest scores be awarded to surfers who actually dropped-in and therefore took off wider? Do years of commitment to heavy waves subtly factor into the equation? Should the spirit of your approach be a factor? Should there be a special award that combines scores plus the surfer’s age? Or should the young, underground surfer who charges hardest on the day be rewarded for their bravado?
Everyone will have their view on who ‘shoulda’ won today’s Eddie Aikau Invitational but no one could accuse the judges of letting status influence their final decision. Hawaiian, Luke Shepardson has been on the fringes of the scene for a number of years. He’s had Pipe Masters cameos and a few wild, freesurfing moments that made plenty of social media noise, but he was essentially an outsider in a field that included the likes of John John Florence, Billy Kemper, Mark Healey, Jamie Mitchell, Nathan Florence, Lucas Chianca, Kai Lenny, Twiggy Baker and the Rothman brothers, to name a few.
According to the free-flowing commentary team, while the rest of the field prepared their meal supplements and fiddled with quivers, Shepardson had to ask his boss at The City Council Lifeguards for the day off so that he could go and surf in The Eddie.
There is no suggestion that it influenced the final decision, but the fact that Shepardson, like Eddie before him, is a lifeguard certainly has a nice symmetry to it. Next week he might be back on the beach, pulling mums from Minnesota out of the Waimea shorey, but for today Luke Shepardson is ‘King of the Bay’. Maybe he’ll use the result to hustle a better sponsor and make more of his surfing career, but it won’t matter if he doesn’t. For the rest of his life he’ll be on the Winners List for the most coveted big wave event in surfing, right there alongside Kelly Slater and John John and Greg Long – Luke Shepardson, the kid who grew up on The North Shore and beat all the big names from Hawaii and around the world in The Eddie.
10th Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational Results
- 1st – Luke Shepardson
- 2nd – John John Florence
- 3rd – Mark Healey
- 4th – Billy Kemper
- 5th – Kai Lenny
- 6th – Zeke Lau
- 7th – Landon McNamara
- 8th – Keali’i Mamala
