Ski driver Sérgio Cosme, Rodrigo Koxa, Prime Minister António Costa, WSL CEO Sophie Goldschmidt, and some very awkward-looking shakas. Photo: Rodrigo Koxa and @visitportugal
You might have forgotten that Rodrigo Koxa broke Garrett McNamara’s world record for surfing the biggest wave ever. Well, the Portuguese National Tourism Authority wants people to remember, and they’re jogging those memories in a very novel way: replaying the video on loop on a lifesized screen in New York’s Times Square.
I don’t know why you would’ve forgotten about the wave—it’s a world record and all—but that particular feat, in a world where hyperbole is flung around like shit by a monkey, actually WAS the “biggest wave ever surfed!” But for some reason, it flew under the radar. Nazaré, as you know, is famous for those giant waves that funnel through a deep water canyon. It was just a few years back that the Portuguese National Tourism Authority got a hold of Garrett McNamara and told him about the wave. Thinking it could be a good draw for tourism, they decided that Garrett was the man to show it to the world, and did he ever. After a few years of hard scoffing by most of the surf world (“it’s not a real wave,” they scoffed from their lineups while blowing takeoffs on two-footers. “It’s a mushburger!”), people began to sit up and take notice. Gmac knew it was coming. “From the day we walked up to the Nazaré lighthouse eight years ago and witnessed the biggest waves we had ever seen, our goal has been to share the incredible country of Portugal with the world,” explained McNamara.
Now, on every massive swell, a crew of some of the most dedicated big wave surfers in the world can be found bobbing around amid the maelstrom. Everything about the place makes it a near-perfect spectator spot. Waves the size of literal buildings, a pretty little lighthouse perched atop a cliff in the foreground, and of course, little tiny people on surfboards sliding around on those moving mountains while cliff-dwellers with cameras ooh and aah. For a long time, Garrett McNamara, he of boundless energy and fiery intensity, held the world record. Then a swell of terrifying proportions came marching over the horizon and Koxa, a Brazilian who has been quietly surfing enormous waves for a long time, found himself in the perfect spot on the biggest wave of his life. He was on the rope of a ski driven by Sérgio Cosme. “It’s my fifth season here,” Koxa told The Inertia‘s Shannon Quirk via Facebook Live. “I love this place. This place changed my life. All my life I give all my best to surf big waves, and in 2014 I got one huge swell here. I actually almost died…And now I got a present from God. It was the best present I’ve ever had.”
And now, for a month straight, that wave will be shown on a 100-foot digital LED billboard in New York’s most bustling place. The campaign is the brainchild of Walter Chicharro, the mayor of Nazaré, and cost somewhere around $280,000. “Nazaré has reached one of its biggest levels of international promotion,” the proud mayor wrote. “Portugal’s tourism decided to use our wave as a promotion in the most mythical square in the world. From today all visitors from times square in New York can see a video of the Guinness record on the facade of one of their buildings. This tourism initiative of Portugal, which was attended by Prime Minister António Costa at its launch, is the crowning of a long work developed by Nazaré and which gained a greater dimension after the arrival of this team to the municipal executive in 2013. A special word to Francisco Spinola who soon realized the potential of the work that was to be done in Nazaré and did not hesitate when I launched the challenge of bringing Nazaré to the world championship stage of giant waves. Also a special word to the entire team that worked to make all this possible. Finally, a special word for all surfers, record holders or not, and our secretary of state for tourism, Ana Mendes Godinho, who from the moment she took office showed an extraordinary commitment to our entire project. Thank you all.”
