The Best American Sports Writing 2014(111)

Then he burst up out of the sea. The shark stood him up, his legs in its mouth. And while he beat at its snout with the blunt end of his boogie board, another shark leapt from the water and bit into his torso. For one impossible, hopeful instant, while the second shark hung in the air, jaws snapping, the whole thing must’ve seemed like some kind of terrible hoax, or a collective hallucination. Then the momentum of the leaping shark carried man and beasts back down into the water, into a spreading pool of blood.

This primal scene of large wild animals hunting us could’ve been witnessed by any number of locals and tourists sunbathing on the beach or sipping drinks at the cafés along the promenade, for it was three o’clock on a sunny afternoon, September 19, 2011, the tail end of the surf season at Boucan Canot beach and a busy time at this festive resort town on the west coast of Réunion  , a French island about 400 miles east of Madagascar. The lifeguards, surfers themselves and friends of the victim, saw it going down right in front of them. Vincent Rzepecki, a powerfully built 31-year-old, was the first guard to hit the water. He couldn’t believe what was happening. He’d grown up with Schiller, had dinner with him the night before last. Now he paddled like mad, hoping for the best.

Of the half-dozen surfers in the water, Yves Delaplin had been closest to the accident. He remembers the fear and the shock, and the inner conflict of fight or flight. From about 20 feet away, he saw the slick of blood and heard Schiller call out from the middle of it, “Shit! Yves!” Time seemed to smear into one long panicky moment of hesitation—the sharks visible as fast-moving blurs, everyone yelling “Get out of the water!”—and then Delaplin, on a bodyboard himself, kicked toward the accident. He was holding Schiller in his arms when Rzepecki arrived on the paddleboard.

“Get out of here!” he ordered Delaplin. “Let me do my job!” And with that he took custody of the victim, shifting the stricken surfer up onto the deck of the paddleboard. Rzepecki saw at once that the situation was hopeless. Schiller’s chest was torn open; water washed into the cavity. Still, he was determined to deliver his friend to shore. Then the next set arrived, a series of 12-foot-tall walls of water. Rzepecki heard the roar of whitewater behind him, and then he and Schiller were ripped from the paddleboard, driven down, and slammed hard on the bottom. Amid a blizzard of turbulence, still clutching his friend to his chest, Rzepecki was somehow aware of the sharks in the whitewater with him, gray shapes at the edge of his vision.

He surfaced with Schiller in his arms, gulped air, and the next wave bore down. Now his thoughts flashed back to a previous fatality at a nearby surf break, Ti Boucan. Three months earlier, 31-year-old Eddy Aubert had been killed during a late-afternoon surf session. Not a widely popular figure like Schiller, Aubert had been more of a soul surfer, a free spirit living with his girlfriend up in the hills. Aubert’s death had seemed an isolated tragedy rather than part of a pattern. Now the pattern emerged. Same pattern of bites to leg and torso. Maybe the same sharks. Sharks with no fear of men. Rzepecki was suddenly very much afraid and close to panicking. He was hurt and he was drowning. His friend was dead. He had to let him go.

By the time he made it back to shore, the nautical crew from the fire department was already on the beach, equipped with scuba tanks, preparing to take on the recovery of the body. According to Rzepecki and other lifeguards, the divers ran into trouble immediately. Despite employing Shark Shields (devices that emit electronic pulses to repel sharks), they were forced to retreat into caves beneath the spit of rocks that delineates the north end of Boucan Rights, while the sharks, in a highly agitated state, frisked in and out of view in the impact zone. Mathieu Schiller’s body was never found.





The world-famous left point break at St. Leu is the surf spot of my dreams, and of my nightmares too. In the predawn gloom, I paddle a big red rental longboard through the chilly glass of the tranquil channel. Sanhn-Loo! I know the place from boyhood lore, Endless Summer fantasies, and surf-magazine pics. French and African. So cool. A long and leisurely paddle out, and then a fast fun ride on a perfectly peeling left-hander. Truly one of the world’s great surfing waves.

Normally, on this crowded planet, I’d never get a wave at a famous break like this. I’m not good enough, not aggressive enough. But things are far from normal now on Réunion  . The locals here are staying high and dry, staging a kind of informal strike. According to native wisdom, the risk of a shark attack has become intolerable. Since the death of 21-year-old Alexandre Rassiga in July, the third fatality in just over a year, there have been protest marches, a lot of shouting, and a bit of violence, with surfers demanding that the government kill the offending animals. I’ve arrived in the midst of a turf war between man and shark. It’s Saturday morning, August 25, 2012, less than three weeks after yet another attack, this one not fatal but nearly so—a mauling right here at St. Leu—and there’s nobody out in the water but me and Mickey Rat.