Conor Maguire is used to Irish winters. He’s used to the cold, the howling wind, the pelting rain. He’s used to the giant, hard-to-surf swells and used to learning to enjoy the difficulties that surfing in Ireland brings. But last winter, Ireland was a little bigger, a little scarier, a little more… Irish than winters past.
You probably remember one particular wave that Maguire caught at Mullaghmore. Once you see it, it’s hard to forget. It hit the internet and the world collectively gasped.
“While the last European winter was a blockbuster….it will be Conor’s Mullaghmore monster that steals the show,” wrote the folks at Red Bull. “After waiting and waiting, and waiting some more, Maguire signed off on a memorable season with the kind of wave that makes a career: a huge, triple-overhead behemoth that let him pick his line and aim for glory.”
Of course, it wasn’t just Maguire who spent the winter scoring. Patch Wilson, Matt Smith, Tom Gillespie, Dan Skajarowski, Julian Farmer, Cian Logue, Aaron Dees, and Yann Mestelan, plus lone Aussie-expat Noah Lane were all involved in the winter-long wave-chase that Red Bull Sessions documented. It was, to be sure, a winter that no one will forget.
