Clay Marzo does things that no one else can do. All the time. Photos: YouTube//Screenshot
Clay Marzo is a bit of an enigma. He’s certainly one of the best surfers in the world, but in the very brief few days I’ve had the pleasure of spending with him, I got the feeling that Clay Marzo would happily be one of the best surfers in the world if no one knew that he was.
Marzo has always been more comfortable in the water. At the age of 10, he won a state swimming title. A few years later, his half-brother Cheyne Magnussen, who had a deal with Quik at the time, urged him to send a sponsor-me video in. It landed on the desk of one Strider Wasilewski, who was the team manager at the time.
“I’d never seen a kid at that age do those things,” Wasilewski told ESPN. “Some of what he did was mind-blowing at any age. It was like someone had sent me the instructions to create the first nuclear bomb. I knew I’d received a package that would change the face of surfing.”
Soon, he found himself on a boat with Dane Reynolds, Fred Patacchia, Ry Craike, and Kelly Slater. It was obvious to all of them that Marzo was different. But as a guy with Asperger’s, a high-functioning form of autism, the whole pro surfing thing, with its constant travel and contests, was a real struggle. Quik cut him from the roster, but Marzo just continued doing what they had sponsored him for in the first place, minus all the stuff he hated.
He is obsessive about surfing. A wizard on a surfboard, routinely doing impossible things. We don’t see enough of his wave riding, but when we do, it’s a stark reminder that Clay Marzo can do things on a surfboard no one else on Earth can do, and he’s doing them whether anyone is watching or not.
