Notas del episodio
In 2023 Sebastian Steudtner surfed an 86 foot wave at Nazaré, Portugal, roughly the height of an eight story building. Wave riding began in several places: Peruvian fishermen rode reed craft called caballitos de totora back to shore, children in what is now Ghana and Senegal rode wood planks and rush bundles, and stand up surfing on carved boards emerged in Polynesia around 400 AD and became woven into Hawaiian society and ritual. In 1885 three Hawaiian princes shaped redwood boards and surfed the mouth of the San Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz, and in 1907 developers Abbot Kinney and Henry Huntington brought George Freeth to California to stage surfing exhibitions that sold coastal real estate. Duke Kahanamoku then spread it to Australia and the US East Coast.
A surfable wave starts with wind blowing across a long fetch. When a swell reaches shallow water, drag flattens the circular motion of water into an ellipse until the crest pitches over, and the peel angle decides whether a wave breaks in sequence or closes out all at once. Beach, point, reef, and ledge breaks produce different shapes, from Teahupo'o's square barrel to Pipeline's round tube. Boards went from 150 pound koa planks to balsa, polyurethane foam, and epoxy, and Simon Anderson's three fin thruster enabled sharp vertical turns. The dangers are real: the leash is thought to have played a part in Mark Foo's drowning, rip currents reach 2.5 meters per second, and a 2018 University of Exeter study found surfers three times more likely to carry antibiotic resistant E. coli.
- About 66 percent of surfing injuries come from collisions with the surfer's own board.
- Cold water and wind can make bone grow inside the ear canal, a condition called surfer's ear.
- Long hours of back hyperextension while paddling can cause surfer's myelopathy, a rare spinal cord injury.
- Sidewalk surfing became skateboarding, and the snurfer led to the modern snowboard.
- Carissa Moore and Italo Ferreira won the first Olympic surfing gold medals at Tokyo 2020.