“It actually felt a lot like the day it happened. I just stayed really focused on getting straight back out there and shaking it off.”
That old hackneyed cliche of turning citrus fruit into a delicious thirst-quenching drink sure do fit Australian shredder Kai Mckenzie who has emerged from the haze of surgeries and shock of losing a stilt to a Great White shark in brilliant form.
Recently, Kai got himself back in the water, bouncing down the sand on his one remaining leg and stealing into little tubes as a surfboard-riding booger.
Surfing World, that wildly under appreciated surfing magazine run as a labour of love by two of the greats in the game, Sean Doherty and Jon Frank, documented the event beautifully.
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Best thing ya gonna see today.
A couple of weeks back @kai_mckenzie had his first surf since losing his leg to a white shark at North Wall. Where’d he go? Straight back out to North Wall with a bunch of his mates. We’ve got a story with this legend in the new mag which comes out next week. It’s fucking inspirational stuff.
“But before he gets his prosthetic leg and starts surfing again, Kai has to get back in the water. He knows exactly where he’s going first. “I just want to go paddle back out at North Wall and sit there and get past that shit, then I’ll be sweet.”
Just as this mag went to print, that happened.
On a Monday morning, three months after the attack, Kai returned to North Wall. Three-foot, clean, sunny, nobody around. “It actually felt a lot like the day it happened,” reflects Kai. With him this time was a small group of family and friends who recognised the importance of what Kai was about to do and wanted to be there with him.
“That was the biggest thing for me,” he says. “I wanted to get back into the water. I just stayed really focused on getting straight back out there and shaking it off.”
With one of his old boards under his arm he jumped in the shorebreak and paddled out. He sat out there alone for a few minutes before his crew followed him into the lineup. Kai even caught a couple of waves laying down. He’s mates with a bunch of the boog crew in Port who were there at North Wall to support him. “They reckon I’ve actually got a pretty good boog style,” he laughs. “They gave me a board and I’m going to be on the lid now for a bit, I reckon. It’s good, those guys fire me up.”
“But it’s gone now,” he says of the psychological weight of being back out in the water. “It’s done. Time for the next step.”
Surfer of the year?
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Is there an over/under on the remaining leg yet?
and to think, most struggle with two legs…
He’s going surfing at his right leg?
How confusing.
Good on him though.
Imagine a sport were you go to play and the trade off could be an arm or a leg or worse. That’s surfing. Potential pure massacre.
It’s really unfathomable how he did that,
Someone send this to Felipe
Actually no, he’ll probs just be like ‘shuper cool bro!’ and miss the relevance to his situation…
Now that’s a real surfin story.
Which is why it was all written and pics taken by a real surf journalism team, vs DR just sharing it. It’s almost like BG is operating down a limb in the surf ecosystem, but just without the inspiring backstory behind it.
And yet here we all are. Again.
Boogs way cooler than surfers it turns out
Right on
Staunch!!
A leg-end among leg-ends !
Aussie Beth
Fucken A one
He puts the can in Mckenzie fo sho!