Waves like this are what Russell Bierke dreams about. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Russell Bierke isn’t a guy who is going to shout about his achievements from the rooftops. He’s quiet, soft spoken with measured words, but his surfing screams louder than anything he could ever say. And in his most recent YouTube installment, the viewer sees the best moments of a decade filled with unreal moments.
Bierke is a connoisseur of the slab. The waves he likes are often the waves most surfers wouldn’t even want to sniff at. The thicker the better. The shallower the better. The hollower the better. He wasn’t all that well known outside of Australian big wave circles until 2016, when he won the Red Bull Cape Fear contest held at Shipstern Bluff, Tasmania. After that, he became the youngest surfer on the Big Wave Tour, but his youth appeared to have no bearing on his skill. That’s because he got a taste of the big stuff early.
“My dad has always loved surfing big waves and shaping boards for them,” he told The Inertia. “As a kid, I would always want to join him, and as I got older and more capable in the water I started tagging along. My first time in big surf was at Bells when I was 12 years old, it was about 10 feet and stormy. I remember being terrified and regretting paddling out, until I wore a big wash-through on the head and it was nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. It gave me the confidence to take off on a wave. I stuck the drop, got caught behind the section and washed to the beach. That session gave me a taste for big waves and I was hooked.”
Hooked is an understatement. He has spent the rest of his life chasing waves that 99.9 percent of the world couldn’t surf, and not only does he surf them, but he surfs them incredibly well.
