Russ Bierke is not a loud person. Still waters, as they say, run deep—and Bierke’s got some deep waters. At 18, he won arguably one of the scariest big wave events ever run, Red Bull’s Cape Fear contest. He takes his brutal lumps with a smile, then paddles back out to catch another wave that nearly everyone else on Earth would run screaming from. Here’s a closer look at the guy who is quietly taking the big wave world by storm. Now, he’s the youngest competitor on the Big Wave World Tour. “I don’t really feel intimidated by the other guys,” he said. “I definitely do feel like I have something to prove.”
