The day it’s finally confirmed that a surfer rode a 100-foot wave, it’s going to be anti-climactic. For all we know, Alo Slebir already did so last December at Maverick’s. But there are two things that take the shock value out of the accomplishment. For starters, it takes several months to get an official measurement of waves in the realm of world record heights. The current record, held by Sebastian Steudtner, took 18 months to measure, for example.
And secondly, too many people claim to have ridden 100-foot waves with absolutely no merit. They see an image of a really big wave they rode and start a hype campaign that dies the day an official measurement comes through. Ironically, by the time a wave height has been determined, somebody will have claimed to have ridden a bigger wave, and the cycle will continue.
Slebir’s Mav’s wave still feels special six months later though. I’d argue that’s partly because it rolled through Maverick’s and not Nazaré. The former isn’t a place where world records are claimed nonstop, the latter is. Jeff Clark himself called the wave a unicorn — a single wave like no other wave he’d ever seen at Mav’s. And he’s been there for decades now.
The day itself was something special, Slebir, Clark and forecaster Mark Sponsler all recall in the ESPN feature, above. Even Slebir’s mom knew December 23, 2024 was going to be unique. They had all been tracking the NNW swell and as far as two weeks out knew that it had one-of-a-kind potential.
“To get supersized, that’s an occurrence of about once every 10 years if you’re lucky or maybe as rare as once every 20 years,” Sponsler said.
Sure enough, Mavs looks different when they all showed up that day.
“That wave, when it came up on the horizon, it looked like a wall of water from the very north end to the very south end that we could see,” Alo Slebir says.
He also says he “pretty much blacked out” on the wave itself, at least in the final moments holding onto the tow rope and the initial drop. He does remember the bottom turn and he remembers telling himself it was one of the bigger waves he’d ever caught. Oddly, he describes a general sense that the whole wave was moving backwards.
“Hearing it (the wave) just rumble behind me and me already being at the base of that bottom turn, it actually made me relax,” he says.
Slebir doesn’t seem to care if the wave measures 100 feet or not when it’s all said and done. It’s the biggest one he’s ever caught.
