"Every paddle out, every wipeout and every glorious ride."
It was ironic, last January, when the “best day in surfing history,” as big-wave world champ Billy Kemper described it, had nothing to do with the WSL, surf brands or even, as the winner was announced on the beach by Clyde Aikau, a professional surfer.
In building twenty-to-thirty-foot surf, Luke Shepardson, twenty-seven, who started the morning by clocking in to his gig as a North Shore lifeguard, took a few hours off work and by day’s end had beaten the most stacked field in the event’s history.
Apart from defending champ John John Florence, who finished second, Shepardson outsurfed big-wave world champs Makua Rothman and Billy Kemper, both surprise competitors after suffering injuries at the Backdoor Shootout, Kai Lenny, Zeke Lau, Grant Baker, Ross Clarke-Jones and so on.
In Nathan Florence’s telling of the event, middle bro does what he does best: a quick intro, in this case walking along the Kam Highway in the pre-dawn darkness, then has his filmers capture every moment from a truly epic day, and, in the edit, the action is allowed to breathe, so to speak.
Watch on a big screen, sound up so you can hear the thunder of the ocean and the gasps of the crowd as closeout sets hammer the best surfers in the world and the jet-ski teams roar shoreward.
Yeah, it’s old but, also, ageless.