Every break has its treasured stories of great days, waves and wipeouts that get passed around from one surfer to the next, but few places have amassed the legend that Teahupoo has in the short time it’s been ridden. Here Tracks gets the inside word on some of the most memorable moments to go down at the notoriously heavy left.
‘Last year was a really good season. There were four incredible swells, and I was lucky enough to be there for all of them.
‘The day before the swell arrived I saw Cindy Drollet and said, “What’s the story with the boat?” and she said, “Well, you’re going to have to speak to Nathan Florence and Koa Rothman and Eli, because they’ve hired the boat for this swell.”
‘So I hooked up with those guys and on the day they picked me up from my place. They were staying at the old Billabong place where Andy used to stay.
‘It started at around eight feet and I think it got up to around twelve feet Hawaiian. Koa Rothman got some amazing tubes. He was pretty much the standout, I reckon. He got some really good drops. Nathan got a couple of good ones, but nothing crazy or definitive. Some wipeouts went down. Then Nathan got that fucking smoker. And I was kind of gobsmacked that I didn’t really … I mean, I thought it was great, but at the time I never realised that it was literally one of the greatest rides of all time, I wasn’t thinking like that.
‘After it Nathan came back to the boat and everyone was giving him high-fives and he was pretty amazed himself at the ride. I don’t think he thought he could make it. He thought he was too high in the tube.
‘It wasn’t a huge wave. I’m sure there have been bigger waves paddled into out there, but just the way he rode it was what made it so special. It was quite a powerful swell, the first day of the swell, so there was quite a bit of period in it. It was such a powerful wave, it really sucked up on the reef, and then for him to paddle into it like he did and ride it like he did, it was amazing.
‘The momentum of the bottom-turn brought him off the bottom and then he rose so fast that he could sort of go up and around, so he kind of rode around the foamball, and that’s what allowed him to get out. Anyone else probably would’ve just bottom-turned and ended up on the foamball and got annihilated, but it just seemed to be his wave, his day.
‘You know, I say it to all the big-wave surfers, and they know it, but there’s going to be one time in their lives that they’ll be known for, and that was Nathan’s. And I think it’ll be really hard for him to ever have a moment as good as that, that’ll be his definitive moment on the planet, and everyone will remember him for it.’
