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Outlook: The surfer who found the world’s biggest wave

Magazines & Reviews

10/04/2024 GMT

The surfer who found the world’s biggest wave

BBC World Service - Outlook, The surfer who found the world’s biggest wave

Garrett McNamara made history when he surfed a 78-foot wave in Nazaré, Portugal

Garrett McNamara spent years searching for the perfect big wave. In Nazaré, a small town in Portugal, he found it: a 78-foot wall of water which he surfed and made history.

Garrett McNamara didn't have a conventional childhood. By the age of 11, he'd lived in communes and even a cult, but when the family settled in Hawaii – and he discovered surfing for the first time – he knew he'd found his home. As an adult, Garrett quickly became known as one of the best and most fearless big wave surfers, travelling the world in search of ever bigger waves. Three decades into that search, he arrived in Nazaré, a small fishing town in Portugal to find the biggest and most powerful wave in the world. And when he surfed it, he made history. 

Cass Collier grew up surfing with his dad on the segregated beaches of apartheid South Africa. The rules were often brutally enforced, but Cass's dad Ahmed, a pioneering South African surfer and member of the ANC, never backed down, teaching Cass that he had a right to surf at any beach he chose. Cass eventually became a world-class surfer and went on to win the International Surfing Association Big Wave championships in Mexico in 1999 becoming the first non-white surfer to hold the title.  He spoke to Outlook's Anu Anand in 2021.

Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707

Photo: Garrett McNamara surfing in Nazaré in 2013. Credit: Tó Mané courtesy of Garrett McNamara

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