Helmet time.
We surfers, we queens of the sea, know that a certain amount of risk is baked in to our favorite pastime. But who, here, doesn’t have a story of dislocated shoulder or twisted ankle suffered in, or around, the lineup? Reef rash, pterygium, boardshort chafe etc.
Well, in a first of its kind study, performed by good and honest smarties in South Carolina, it has been revealed that the torso and limbs are not at greatest danger, whilst surfing, but rather the face and head.
Dr. Brian Saway, a neurosurgery resident at the Medical University of South Carolina, is also a stone-cold shredder and became interested in surf-related injuries and so decided to make research.
According to the Post and Courier, Dr. Saway and his team:
…were able to pull out 25 studies, from 1976 to 2025, covering more than 72,000 patients. What they could conclude is that the most common injuries were cuts to the face, head and neck, which accounted for around four in 10 injuries. The range of concussions and mild traumatic brain injuries varied widely, anywhere from 2.7 percent to 26 percent depending on the study, although it is likely concussions are often missed or go undiagnosed, the study concluded.
The biggest injury-causer in neither reef nor foamball monster but the surfboard itself. The bigger the board, the worse the damage, which is unwelcome news for our hang-ten sisters.
It all makes sense, I suppose. I was just out enjoying a little south pulse at my local. The waves were in that three to five feet range with the occasional bigger set rolling in and cleaning out. There were many who did not like to hold on to their boards during these times and I wondered how many others got bonked as a result.
I suppose four in ten.
That’s how science works.
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Thats a painful looking one for TC. Did the snaking midget catch it on the edge of a table as he was walking past?
matches all the old stripes on his Byrne’s from his heyday ay?
Yeh, that’s why I’m worried about free/longy/tom tom! He went down hard in the desert, scone first into the limestone!
Next thing he’s raving about that 2 foot NZ fat hander with a 75 kph offshore raging, being the all time left, and wanting to set up shop there!
Then he’s turned on Erin Brooks and even Jack Robbo, all time pit masters, for not frothing on and claiming the poxy fat hander. Before having to now claim Brooks as the goat! Although desperately driveling about non technical hand jives?
I think being a swillnut, relaunched dream team secret agent has taken a heavy toll on his scone too. He was forced to suck up to that same disgusting fat hander’s swillnut locals, hanging off their every ludicrous word, even about that famous unpronounceable slabbing left! Not to mention being forced by stupe’ nuttle’ to scream abuse at the hordes of northern rivers twinny riders getting pitted off their scones in all directions! Before abandoning lenno’s and hurling himself at the feet of the WSL sell that fucker debacle! All while standing by, then taking part in and watching the desert storm getting whittled down by swillnut gronks into a typical gronk toothpick. Or even worse, humongous, original versions being hurled over the edge of 4 foot bells, and even that ludicrous NZ fathander, or even, even worse, gracing the roof tops of your basic swillnut gronks patrolling the back streets of Robe (yes Robe… of all places). And now forced to listen to relaunched swillnut dream team, self diagnosed nut jobs blathering about every topic, and feeble injury in the cosmos (including sprained ankles). And also including health and fitness cosmetic surgery, implants and hair transplant debacles.
I thought the time in the desert might have helped free/longy/tom tom, and until the scone bashing, it probably did, but now, the reef butting and swillnut head butting have taken an obvious toll.
The desert left, like many is deluxe. But imagine driving back into town, against a 119kph cross/onshore southerly, the resulting dust and gravel lobbing across the border, the bay a seething cauldron of white caps, and then mindlessly cackling and blathering to everyone that they should fang out there because its pumping! Then asking them if they want to watch a vid of, or read a book about you eating mashed spuds!!! Before telling them that despite being a green fingers aficionado, that you can’t even grow spuds?
It’s time to stand by your obviously disorientated mate… get him out of the swillnuts and WSL fiascos and back into surfing for starters.
Only one scar on the dome from my days as a kid back on The Point. Plenty reef scars on my feet . I’ve donated skin on reefs around the globe. Surfing can be a contact sport .
surf survival from 2011 says this all https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Wonder if that’s Doc on the cover eating shit at OB.
Had a barney in a bucket hat shoot out his firewire after her burned me. Took the rail directly to the jaw. Kanoa’s brother checked to see if I was KO’d. I didn’t know his name and still don’t. But I have been a fan of the Igarashi’s ever since.
Yup. Took me about 13 1/2 years but it eventually happened. Surfed almost every type of surf, size and shape, without taking one to the head, until that day.
brutal ! glad it wasn’t worse
Story time. I never had respect for my peers, in my area (not in the places with massive waves), who would get hit by their surfboards. It only ever seemed to happen to kooks, and I had never been hit by my board (other than my shins or legs) in almost 15 years of surfing at that point. Nor had I ever seen it happen to any good surfers even when we were surfing large surf. Only beginners and kooks.
One day I was working a couple hours away in what we call the country, a rural area of the coastline. I took my board with me hoping to get some waves as there was some large swell running. This was a place that nobody surfs. There are no surfers and there is no surf scene. If a surfer was ever in the area on holiday then he might bring a board, same for any surfer who was posted in the area for work. Very rare.
I had been begging my ding guy to get me back this weird, epoxy, vacuum bagged board out of Florida (likely shaped somewhere around 2005-2007) that I had acquired from an acquaintance. I had only surfed the board a couple of times and hadn’t figured it out as yet, but was hoping that it would be a proper, high-performance short board, because all of my recent boards had been shit. I got the board back, the night before.
After work was finished , about 11am, I pulled up to the beachbreak and paddled out into overhead surf, a rarity on this part of the coastline because of topographical / bathymetry reasons. It was either my first or my second wave, and it could very well have been my first, I drop in and immediately go over the handlebars as if I had yanked a handbreak. Front foot too far forward on a board I didn’t know at a break I had only ever surfed a few times. Some real kook shit.
So I hit the water and immediately push off the sand, to the surface, and feel the bottom of my board hit the top of my head. Hard. It hurt. Compressed my head into my shoulders. Ouch. I decide to paddle in. While riding in on my belly I see a lifeguard on the beach. This was a surprise. I didn’t know this beach had lifeguards and none of the beaches we regularly surfed had lifeguards. Lifeguards only worked at swimming beaches and there was no surf at the swimming beaches, and very poor swimming at most of the surf beaches which are all very rural.
I run up to him and ask him how the wound looks as I have blood on my hand as i touched it. Feels like a bump, though, which I want to ignore like any other bump to my head.
“Nah”, he says. “You should go to the health centre to have that looked at.”
Imagine my surprise when I asked the nurse to show me the photos she took with my phone (pretty much the very first photos I had ever taken with an iphone, in Jan 2009). I, too, now was a kook. Didn’t even get to surf the swell properly.
Also, it probably wasn’t the bottom of my board that smashed into my head with the help of the overhead closeout. What a barney. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Did you trim the right side to match the left?
Done at home. I probably kept it for somewhere between a day or two. Maybe buzzed it off on the Monday morning. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Was it a “coil” board? they were sick.
It was. First generation Coil. I wasn’t impressed.
But then a local surfer made a connection with the shaper and dozens of us got some of the second and third generation boards which all worked well and were bullet proof. You could break them, and ding them if you tried hard enough but I never got a single pressure ding in mine. Amazing. I got mine from him in Nov 2009, and it’s the best board I ever surfed at our local point.
Think the fella got a really bad case of cancer. Not even sure if it came back and if he’s alive. Sad stuff, because the fella was a gem.
How many Coils did you try? Did you go for a high performance board or a small wave board?
slow day for sharks and real estate , on to concussion grit
Worrying trends. Miss the surf comp write ups most.
ultra hard brain injury
Definitely a few here who slipped out of the doctor’s hands when they were born.
WHY the good doctor didn’t come straight to the comment section on BG for his study group is beyond me? The obvious amount of lingering head trauma and permanent injuries with the BG cretins creates a sample size that any study would be envious of to complete a dataset for peer review. Speaking of which my hip seems to have recovered from a traumatic longboard leash tug I endure a few weeks ago along with the ongoing tumbling pebble wounds on my toes and feet….
Jesus only needed twelve.
I truly love this comment!
For a second I thought that was a picture of Charles Montgomery Burns from The Simpsons but Charlie don’t surf.
A PBS documentary about the Biggest Wednesday, Condition Black swell of Jan 1998. The day the Eddie was called off for the swell being too large, and Ken Bradshaw caught his record wave at Outer Log Cabins.
Excellent presentation of the ocean science behind the swell. Best watched at 1.25X during the boring bits. I never got to see any of the footage before, other than maybe a couple of the 60ft waves, and only ever saw what was published in Surfing magazine at the time.
epic , and btw you were spot on re that Nepal / Tibet footage , unbelievable , never seen anything like it
Bookmarked for later. 🙂
you do know that RCJ/T-ray were out there and got mowed by a monster…KB drove by and left them to get the shots from the helicopter that RCJ had organized….KB was ostracised after that!
I would guess the study overrepresents head lacerations because they bleed a lot more than a similar cut on your arm.
And here I though surfers didn’t bruise or bleed on the outside.
https://youtube.com/shorts/1husM873QSY?si=4aVINIgL237vX7uW
“If it bleeds, we can kill it!” -Dutch