Making your mark as an elite talent in big wave surfing requires charging in new and challenging places. It’s one thing to be a standout on the local scene but an entirely different ballgame once an athlete can push their limits in waves of consequence that are unfamiliar. For 15-year-old Ned Hart, aka “Overhead Ned” to those back at home in West Oz, that unfamiliar territory became Teahupo’o.
Hart told The Inertia earlier this year, “I’d love if this was my life, like a job. I just have to keep trying to get the best waves I can and keep chasing swells. I want to make a career out of this.” His time in Tahiti, it seems, was one step along that road to a big wave career.
The young hellman is taking a look in the rearview mirror now that the whole introduction to Teahupo’o is in the books — a trip that actually started with a stop on the North Shore and some waves at Pipe, as well. But it’s Chopes that inspired Hart to call it, “the best wave I’ve ever seen.”
“Teahupo’o’s such a magical place,” he says now. “The wave is so intense, I took some of the biggest beatings of my life, paid my dues, and got some of the best waves of my life.”
