In November of 2012, Surfer posted the 28 invitees to the Quiksilver In Memory of Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational, a 28-year-old event in which the world's best giant riders drop into 25-foot-plus swells to honor the late Hawaiian surfer. Left off the list, though included as an alternate, was 55-year-old North Shore veteran Michael Ho. Commenters sounded off:
"Mike Ho should be in before anybody wats goin on?? He has been in the
first one invited every year and actually knew Eddie Aikau blown!"
Every morning for the past 17 years, Pete and Val have been swimming together at the local pool. Every year on June 12, they race—two laps, up and back. That's all.
When he competes in triathlons, nine-year-old Conner Green puts in extra work so that his seven-year-old brother Cayden Long can race with him. Cayden has cerebral palsy and can't walk on his own. In the swim portion, Connor pulls Cayden in a raft. In the running portion, he pushes him in a stroller. In the bike portion, he pulls him in a cart. The brothers have competed in more than a dozen triathlons since 2011, and were named Sports Illustrated Kids'2012 Sportskids of the Year. Watch their story in the video above.
The finished product—with super slow mo footage of thousands of pounds of falling water, the tap of falling raindrops, and kayakers winding through tight slots—is polished. But the nine-day filmmaking trip to Mexico was anything but smooth.
Everything started when kayaker Erik Boomer and photographer Tim Kemple called filmmaker Anson Fogle and invited him on a simple jaunt to chase waterfalls. "Naively, we all talked about it as a vacation," said Fogle.
On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, Shane Dorian paddled into a monster swell at Jaws and ended up surfing the best wave of his life. He flew down the face, over an air bubble that almost knocked him down, and raised his arms in triumph once in the barrel—until he realized he had a lot more surfing to do. Eventually, he emerged from the wave's spray standing up and soon garnered an early entry into the 2013 Billabong XXL Big Wave Awards.
