The Best American Sports Writing 2014(117)
Just before Christmas in 1994, Hawaiian pro surfer Mark Foo took a red-eye flight from Honolulu to California. A swell was hitting Mavericks, and he wanted to arrive in time to catch it. Stoked but sleep-deprived, Foo paddled out and took off on a relatively innocent-looking 20-foot wave. The ride was photographed from multiple angles, and pictures captured Foo wiping out near the base. He never came up. Most think his leash got tangled in the rocks, fettering him to the ocean floor as wave after wave crashed above him. Two hours later, his body was discovered in a nearby lagoon, still tied to the shattered tail section of his board. Foo’s death brought nationwide attention to Mavericks, a break whose size, until then, most surfers considered a myth.
In the following years there were rough storms, triple-wave hold-downs, too many close calls to count. But true tragedy didn’t strike again at Mavericks until 2011. It was late on an early-spring day when Sion Milosky, also Hawaiian, charged what many have since estimated was a 60-foot wave. Milosky—fearless, ranked, and respected—never emerged. He wiped out, was held down by two waves, and probably lost consciousness. Twenty minutes later, he was found floating in the waters of a nearby jetty. There was no contest that year; this was just a regular day—what many surfers refer to as “getting wet.”
The first heat won’t begin for another hour, and not all the competitors are here yet. So far, the parking lot’s mostly filled with spectators, likely all surfers themselves: kindergartners sitting on skateboards, gray-haired men with ragged backpacks and promotional sweatshirts. As they arrive, the competitors are easy to spot. They’re the color of terra-cotta and look as though they’ve never been indoors. Surfers have a kind of compromised grace. They maintain dignity in spite of ridiculous clothing and a constant low level of physical discomfort (chafing neoprene, freezing water, piss-soaked wetsuits). Their shoes are cloven-toed, they wear skintight unitards, and most of the time they are responsible for a delicate, awkwardly shaped object that can serve as entertainment, transportation, and weapon. These are the kind of men who can be sincerely described as “beautiful.” To watch them as a woman isn’t to desire them so much as to wish you were a man.
The defending champion, a barrel-chested, 38-year-old South African named Chris Bertish, stands next to a propped-up surfboard and makes prayer hands at everyone who takes his picture. The other guys are seated in the beds of trucks, next to their guns, which is what you call the extra-long boards needed to surf a wave like the ones that break at Mavericks. Some guys with camera gear are hanging around them, along with a few UC Santa Cruz students who blog for surfing websites. By this point, the sun is shining and everyone’s smiling and making small talk. The conditions, it’s agreed, are sick. Kelly Slater, the most famous surfer in the world, was supposed to compete today, but has failed to show up. “Because he’s a pussy,” someone matter-of-factly says.
I overhear someone claim that 87,000 people have bought tickets. This is a demented estimate. Over the course of the day, about 30,000 people will trickle in and out, but right now it’s more like 1,500—max. Sierra Nevada, the unofficial beverage of Northern California, has set up a beer garden, which in this case means “fenced-off part of the parking lot with a keg in it.” There’s a clam chowder truck and a hot dog cart. For a $10 ticket, it’s about what you’d expect.
The crowd contains a lot of stupidly handsome Australians, even more obese adults in 49ers gear, and a good number of cruel-seeming young boys. Their mothers, though irresponsibly tanned, appear attentive. They wear flared jeans, snug tank tops, and platform flip-flops. They have French manicures, puka-shell necklaces, and toe rings. Either their taste has not changed since spring break 1998 or they’ve just decided, dispassionately, that this is the hottest way to dress.
A lot of the people here—both men and women—possess all the features that constitute a modern, normative standard of beauty, but exaggerated to a ghoulish degree. They’re so blond and so tanned and so lean that it all actually starts to look like one big mess of congenital disorders. A towheaded guy kisses his towheaded girlfriend, and it’s shocking—seconds before I had assumed they were fraternal twins.
Among the surfers, there is a lot of synthetic fiber and a lot of buckles. Most of their clothing, it seems, is designed to be either aero- or hydrodynamic. The gear is only a symptom—almost every aspect of a surfer’s life is functional. They know the tides and what they mean for your plans to walk the dog on the beach. They know why salmon is more expensive this winter and when there’s too much plankton in the water to swim without getting sick. Their friendships are often opportunistic, but in a straightforward way: with the fishermen who can tow them out to far-off breaks, the park rangers who clear the trails that lead to the most remote reefs, the contractors who employ them when the swells are bad.