Dane Reynolds makes triumphant return to surf after almost fatal head injury in Mexico

One day after the freak accident that nearly killed him, Dane Reynolds climbs back on the horsey.

The go-for-broke Bakersfield-born surfer and former world number four Dane Reynolds has made a triumphant return to surfing after a freak accident that almost cost him his life. 

Dane Reynolds, whose Carpinteria idyll was shattered seven months ago when Travis and Kourtney Barker-Kardashian splurged $16.5 million buying Conan O’Brien’s redundant beach house, walked through a glass door in Mexico, shattering the glass and puncturing his forehead.

“That was a change of events,” Dane Reynolds says in the accompanying video, as he presses a t-shirt around his leaking head. Footage captured from the emergency room finds Reynolds supine yet calm, fly wide open, a gap in the flap as they say, body covered in his own blood. 

It isn’t the first time Dane Reynolds has flirted with death.

Eight years ago, surf fans were turned into primitive savages after footage emerged of Chucky Rigano dropping in on Dane fluttering his wings in a long tube, at Sandpit in Santa Babs, California.

I was thinking oh shit, I just hopped some Santa Barbara fisherman that’s gonna kill me. Then I looked closer, and it was Dane Reynolds, honestly one of my favourite surfers,” Chucky told BeachGrit. “The guy that yelled go was for sure yelling at Dane because he made it around the section and was getting pitted!

“He was super pissed initially, and had every right to be. Anyone, including myself would have snapped for sure. I honestly felt so bad and embarrassed as it gets. Imagine crapping your pants on a first date with a girl you really like, and times that by 10! I said I was beyond sorry multiple times and that I really didn’t see the guy.”

Anyway, in a new video just released on his CH11 YouTube channel, we discover that Dane Reynolds was in the water the very next day after being taped up in hospital.

Per the short’s accompanying blurb,

“Dane Reynolds’ first session in Mexico after busting down the door with his big dome piece. Yellow swim cap X OG Channel Islands Rookie at a sloppy right point.”

As Dane says, “Even when the conditions are shit, riding waves is the best thing in the world.”

In the video, Dane Reynolds’ famous daddy-body is heavy, massive like the country that gave him birth, yet when he surfs he becomes like a cowboy of the Westerns: ready to fire his guns at the drop of a hat, getting into a rage at the least provocation.