A long road to recovery expected for the former world number eighteen, "Lost my left heel and did a pretty job on right leg and foot also."
The Oceanside surfer and former world number eighteen, Mike Lambresi, has posted harrowing images of a near-fatal fall while trying to snatch the perfect angle of a pretty cove in San Diego.
Lambresi, fifty-eight this year, posted the shots he took before the fall, as well as his gruesome injury.
“According the my doctor at the trauma center in San Diego, I will need additional surgeries to include skin grafts,” Lambresi wrote on Instagram. “My right leg was also significantly injured with muscle, fatty tissue and heater else all hanging out from my upper right and back side of calf which required seeming up a long flap of ski and stitching up my foot in various places.”
His former sparring buddy, 1988 world champ Barton Lynch, was quick to signal his concern.
“Are you okay mate? What happened?”
“Lost my left heel and did a pretty job on right leg and foot also. Wheelchair for the next month and more surgeries to come for skin grafts etc,” wrote Lambresi.
View this post on Instagram
Fame and chasing the tour never appealed to Lambresi.
Commented on Disqus? Log out, tap the Disqus button, and your old name and comments come back. The box is ours.
Your comments are still here. Every one of them.
Twelve years of BeachGrit comments came across from Disqus. Connect and we will show you how many are yours. We get your username, nothing else.
Connect Disqus to reveal.
wsl season pls come already…
I asked Lambresi one time what his best memory of pro surfing was. “Beating Mark Richards at good Burleigh on my 18th birthday”.
Heal up soon Mike you have more shredding ahead!
wall slammin’ mike lambresi
gaviotas is no joke
Lambresi beat Elkerton at Bells to secure Tom Curren’s second Championship.
Regardless of how he did it, that’s a heavy injury. The guy still surfs really well, but gotta imagine this is gonna slow him way down.
Mike walks up to the edge of the cliff pulling his phone out of his pocket and the song starts…Shake hands with danger…
I googled Seattle Surf Czar and nothing came up except for an article about some pimp in Seattle that is calling himself a street czar? Sounds lame
Yuk, sorry dude. Yeah landing on a flat surface is difficult. You sorta have to land and collapse diagonally onto your leg and then slap the ground with both forearms. Well that’s what the ninjas on youtube were doing anyway
That’s fucking gross.
HEAL well Lambo!
Should just have worked from home…
Seriously injured… while taking a photo for IG. Posting photos of said injury… on IG.
Social media FAIL.
Idiots fall off dangerous high things here in West Oz fairly regularly taking selfies , I think they call it evolution
IG is poison.
Agreed. It’s pretty corrosive to mental health based on Facebooks own internal data.
Photos were definitely not as bad a described. But I think 🤔 Instagram put sensitive because of his hot wife dressed in skimpy out.
See for yourself, you’ve been warned.
Posting the fall/injury is whatever, but this guy is 58 and has his wife filming his surf sessions…
I just hope they’re not filming other sessions too
After reading it in an article about a Surf Expo late 90s early 2000s I finally get to use it and say TAKE IT EASY LAMBRESI
I sincerely wish him all the best but I suggest leave the Instagram photos too young people in future.
Like nearly 60 and your in a wheelchair facing surgery because you wanted the perfect Instagram shot?
Thinking the same thing, and what is it with people posting photos of their injuries?
LOOK AT ME DAD !
I think it replaced the people , since Adam was a boy , who would every second week , turn up with a bandage or sling or support on a different part of their body so you would actually talk to them and ask what happened …. We had a specialist at our swimming club named DD Who also was a classic bullshiter and my Dad said old DD just lived for a good injury . I can just imagine him showing off all his ailments on Farce Book or Injury Gram …
Even Jonah Hill has just got in on the act – posting about a black eye he got while surfing.
The character he played in DONT LOOK UP , was so punchable …..
Please tell me he got punched and was not the victim of self inflicted Doug Rail to the eye socket ?
Any waves over your way ? It’s going gangbusters here ….4 frozen surfs in less than 2 weeks ( if Friday and Sunday pay off )
It looks like it has been good, but I haven’t got out in two weeks. The evenings are getting longer here, be able to get surfs in after work in a week or two!
The days are getting longer , I was in the water at 8am last week .
A lovely time to surf over your way … I had a surf late one night on my first day in Ireland at Bundoran in Easter 98
just before hitting the Pub with the Irish Surf Team and discovered the joys / pain of the Lock-in ….
Restrictions were all raised last week, the mood is great here now. Finally you can go to the pub and not be confined to your table! Things are looking up!
Wishing you Mighty Craic then Jimmy
He did a good job on that character – “I timed the MD perfectly!!!”
did lol hard at that line…
Why the ageism? Granted I agree he looks silly but us old guys can still rip…farts and not much else.
Metaphor for CA professional surfing. Except the bottom of that free fall from the 80s/90s/early 2000s cliff has no end in sight.
Might as well include the entire mainland.
Michael Dunphy might qualify this year , if enough pros above him continue to disappear from the tour ?
Yea if somebody’s been trying to get on tour for ten years he’s not a surfer I’m looking forward to watching.
Good on Dunphy for living the dream and managing to stay sponsored by QUik through the process .
Sometimes you never know ,…
Jack Robinson is roughly the same Age as Kanoa who qualified in 2015 while it took Jack to 2019 …. Kolohe qualified last century but still doesn’t seem to be getting any better , but moved up the order , as one by one , the guys who kicked his arse retired .
Robbo!s problem was that he couldn’t grovel, Dumfy coming from the East Coast probably has that part wired.
I think your focusing on Nationality a lot and I don’t care what country a surfer comes from as long as they are world class talents.
Thanks C4 for the wake up call . Old habits die hard ….but will do my best to have a more international spirit in the future .
No need to change anything.
Considering you don’t even live in oz any longer.
That’s an aussie disease bro.
good dude.
He’s a good surfer I agree. I’m just wondering why there used to be so many solid tour surfers from the East Coast. Is it because the incubator for tour surfers, Sebastian Inlet sucks now?
The old tour had several East Coast stops so it generated more buzz towards pro surfing. I dunno bout Sebastian, but it’s been quiet since the Lopez boys and Hobbbygobblins.
As you know, Santa Barbara is the incubator of the sport in California. HEEEEEEHEEEEE San Clemente!
I have a funny San Clemente story from yesterday, bunch of ho dads came up for a visit and got to meet the Hip. I’m sorry, Lost team riders and one wife. If only I had my phone to film them crawling over the rocks at a secret slab that they stumbled onto.
Haha, funny. Sebastian Inlet doesn’t break like it used to anymore. It doesn’t wedge up and make that hollow right.
I can’t remember what happened, I think they changed the pier. Ruined like Kirra.
The bowl pushes wide after the groyne extension. Still good I’m told on the right combo, but that first peak isn’t what it was.
Got boat trip friends lurking that area.
I like Dunphy, real nice style!
I was up at Boomerang a few years back , North of Newcastle , just after a QS and he was surfing good but fellow US EastCoaster Evan Geiselman , left him for dead in the tricky smallish conditions on that day …. super fast
Seriously , there are no Kooks on the Challenger Series , they are just so good , but the Elite CT guys are just even better …
I surfed boomerang back in 2008, I spent a few weeks living in a campsite in Foster with the ex. Great memories!
With half the tour dead , injured , retired or just having a bad day and one bloke turning 50 , it has never been a better time for a male surfer from California to make a final , and actually win a CT event since Mr Lambresi won the Stubbies , builders crack open …. may I suggest if it’s at Bells they take it easy , unlike LAMBresi , with the Bell and no selfies near the cliffs .
Sorry mate, Shane Beschen and Rob Machado have won tour events, albeit both in the 90’s. Wait, Bobby won 3 too. 3 Biggies.
I was joking .
kolohe tho…
Mike Slamgrisly
A really meaty story for a change.
Like LAMBresi to the Slaughter !
Guy really tore it up, back in the day