Brazil in mourning after German Sebastian Steudtner drops biggest claim in surfing history!

Pride and the fall.

The rise of Brazilian surfing, over the past two decades, has brought much joy and excitement to this sometimes staid Pastime of Kings. Flash, pizzazz, paroxysms of raw emotion. In a word, passion. One of the greatest displays of this bossa nova heartbeat is, undoubtedly, the claim.

What was once an awkward physical spasm after satisfactory completion of a wave professionally surfed transformed to art in the manicured fingers of our handsome Portuguese adjacent brothers. Classic fist pumps, finger snaps, full-bodied yells punctuating 4.6s and 5.4s.

The claim became so essentially Brazilian that non-Brazilians who attempt appear to be haltingly speaking a foreign language.

Awkward.

Awkward, that is, until the German mega-wave rider Sebastian Steudnter just dropped the biggest claim in history thereby shattering  Brazil’s hold on the craft.

Surfing an unsurfable wave.

But you certainly read about the 93.7 foot Nazare bomb Steudnter bagged two months ago. The historic slide is considered to be the biggest wave ever, though the World Surf League with all its engineering and science experts must ratify the exact height. In any case, biggest ever but the unsurfable bit was a surprising hammer.

Per the Daily Mail:

‘Mission Wave Alpha’ has seen (Sebastian Steudnter) train for the perfect wave for years, and the extreme athlete decided that the time was right to surf the biggest waves of his life when Nazaré saw ‘historic’ conditions back in February.

“It was the biggest storm and the biggest waves in the past three or four years. We were, for the first time, surfing the biggest waves in stormy conditions which were considered unsurfable,” he said.

And there we have it.

But have you ever surfed an unsurfable wave?

How did it feel beneath your pioneering feet?

Most importantly, though, how did you claim?