Riding such giant waves is thrilling-and dangerous. (The average wave is only about 11 feet, roughly the height of a basketball hoop.) In 2018, Brazilian surfer Rodrigo Koxa earned the title for the biggest wave ever surfed, after riding a monstrous, 80-foot wave. The whole country had gone surf-crazy.īig-wave surfing is an extreme sport in which surfers attempt to ride waves that are 20 feet or taller. A band called The Beach Boys crooned about the joys of “surfin’ USA.”īy the end of the 1960s, even a kid living on a farm in Kansas-hundreds of miles from the ocean-would probably know what “hang ten” and “wipeout” meant. At the movies, audiences fell in love with a teenage surfer girl named Gidget. ![]() This laid-back lifestyle soon made its way into pop culture, spreading from California across the United States. To them, surfing was about letting your cares fade away, feeling harmony with the natural world-and above all, just having fun, dude. If you visited a California beach in the 1940s, you’d find sand-dusted surfers strumming ukuleles and goofing around between rides. Instead of just riding a wave straight to shore, a surfer could now zigzag nimbly in and out of its curves.īut surfing wasn’t just a sport of skill. This made surfing more accessible for beginners and opened up a whole new world of tricks for experts. The new boards were sleek and made of light foam, with a fin underneath to help the surfer steer. Gone were the heavy, clunky wooden boards of Kahanamoku’s childhood. New designs had made surfboards cheaper and easier to ride. In the following years, the sport slowly gained prominence across the U.S.īy the late 1940s, surfing was exploding in popularity-especially in California, where miles of beaches offered up endless waves. He decided to use his newfound fame to bring the gift of surfing to America-which is how Kahanamoku ended up in Atlantic City later that summer, surfing in front of an astonished crowd.Īs he toured the country giving similar demonstrations, kids and teens were inspired to steal their moms’ ironing boards and try surfing for themselves. At a time when many people still could not point to Hawaii on a map, Kahanamoku became a kind of ambassador for his beautiful, faraway islands. He was invited to show off his aquatic skills at pools and beaches across the U.S. He won gold and silver medals for the United States, becoming a celebrity almost overnight. At the 1912 Summer Games in Stockholm, Sweden, Kahanamoku became the first Hawaiian athlete to win a medal in the Olympics. Dragging a 114-pound surfboard through the water had helped him develop a strong, fast stroke-fast enough to earn him a spot on the U.S. He lived in Honolulu, Hawaii’s largest city.īut it was as a swimmer, not a surfer, that Kahanamoku first caught the world’s attention. Born in 1890, Duke Kahanamoku grew up surfing after school at the beach near his house. And it was part of life, almost as essential as eating or sleeping. Surfing was a ritual, with surfers riding the waves for their ancestors. When the surf came up, entire villages would go to the sea. ![]() It was also enjoyed by almost everyone on the islands-farmers and fishermen, kids and grandparents. Through the centuries, the sport was a favorite of chiefs and chiefesses, of kings and queens. They told stories of powerful gods and goddesses who mastered the sea on their boards. To ancient Hawaiians, surfing was known as he’e nalu, or wave riding. This makes it perfect for surfing there is nothing to stop waves from growing tall and powerful as they hurtle toward the islands’ beaches. Hawaii is one of the most remote places in the world, thousands of miles from any other land. Sparkling turquoise waters stretch as far as the eye can see. Picture paradise in your mind, and you’ll get an idea of what it’s like: lush tropical forests with plants and animals found nowhere else in the world, steep cliffs and towering volcanic peaks, deep valleys with long sandy shorelines. Hawaii comprises a chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean, about 2,400 miles from the west coast of the continental United States. But in Hawaii, it was nearly 1,000 years old. ![]() To the awestruck crowd in Atlantic City, surfing may have seemed new and exciting.
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