“It’s easy to underestimate a head injury. There’s lots of serious side effects that can sneak up on you."
If you saw Ross Williams waiting for a bus you’d never guess he used to be one of the best surfers in the world.
Almost sixty-one, a lazy hairline that holds a haircut like a dust-mop, a chubby figure that changes weight according to his mood.
But put him behind a microphone, at the helm of a prized athlete or in the water and he glows.
Now, in a troubling post to Instagram, Ross Williams has revealed he’s suffered multiple head injuries while surfing.
“Over the last five or six years I’ve had a couple of pretty serious concussion,” writes Williams, who is pictured wearing a take-home helmet called a Sonal, which is made by a Newport-based company called Wave Neuro.
“Two of them were at my favourite surf spot, Haleiwa. (Shout out to my boy Kawika for pulling me out of the water. I was out by myself. The waves were 10 to 12 feet, pretty maxed out Haleiwa. Good thing he was there as I was unconscious for a couple of seconds.)
Editor’s note: The one-time Momentum star needed eleven staples and plastic surgery after he, “dove head first after a wave into the ‘toilet bowl’ straight into the reef. I cracked my head open and nearly ripped a piece of my nose off.”
“It’s easy to underestimate a head injury. There’s lots of serious side effects that can sneak up on you. The good people at @waveneuro have been so helpful to me and my family. My daughter @sebbie_williams also had a severe concussion (much more serious than mine!). With their help we’ve had great therapy and guidance.”
The former sparring partner of Kelly Slater, and now semi-retired father of three, is no stranger to injury. Four years ago, while rehabbing a tweaked knee, he clipped his riding partner’s wheel at forty clicks an hour, hit the bitumen and got…degloved.
The gruesome injury, which is called a Morel-Lavallée lesion, is an “abrupt separation of skin and subcutaneous tissues from underlying fascia.”
Skin ripped off limb to reveal underlying mechanics, like the little leg of a butchered dog.