The WSL’s Peahi Challenge will go down in the history books as one to remember. With near-perfect Jaws conditions, the best big wave riders on the planet showed up for their chance at the the wave of their life and a $100,000. As it turned out, the predicted swell was everything it was hyped up to be… and the carnage was almost as good as the waves that were made.
The day was full of some of the most ridiculous surfing ever. Greg Long’s insanely deep 9-pointer–which Dave Kalama called “one of the biggest waves ever paddled into”– was so mind-numbingly big that it didn’t even seem real:
Before the event even started, things got hairy. Mark Matthews took off on a bomb and separated his shoulder. When the horn sounded, it just kept getting better (or worse, depending on how you look at it). While there were a lot of really, really bad wipeouts, Koa Rothman’s faceplant to bodysurf might’ve been one of the worst:
Billy Kemper ended up with the win. “I’m baffled,” he told Strider Wasilewski from the channel after the clock wound down. “We’ve been talking about this moment for years and to have a paddle event in my backyard at, to me one of the most premier, outstanding waves in the world, means everything to me. It doesn’t feel real and I just want to dedicate this to my brother.”
