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Teahupoo
Teahupoo () is a village on the southwestern coast of the island of Tahiti, French Polynesia, in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is known for the surf break and heavy, glassy waves offshore, often reaching , and sometimes up to . It is the site of the annual Billabong Pro Tahiti surf competition, part of the World Championship Tour (WCT) of the Association of Surfing Professionals World Tour surfing circuit, and used to be one stop in the World Tour of the International Bodyboarding Association. Tahitian Thierry Vernaudon and a few other locals surfed Teahupo’o for the very first time in 1985. Bodyboarding pioneers Mike Stewart and Ben Severson showcased the spot in 1986 and it soon became an underground spot for thrill-seeking bodyboarders. Few professional surfers rode Teahupo'o during the early 1990s and it was only in 1998, at the Gotcha Tahiti Pro, that Teahupo'o became widely recognized as having some of the heaviest waves in the world. On August 17, 2000 Laird Hamilton ...
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Billabong Pro Teahupoo
Billabong Pro Teahupoo is a professional surfing competition of the World Surf League held at the break Teahupo'o in Taiarapu, Tahiti Tahiti (; Tahitian ; ; previously also known as Otaheite) is the largest island of the Windward group of the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is located in the central part of the Pacific Ocean and the nearest major landmass is Austra .... The Billabong Pro Teahupoo was founded in 1999 and has been recognized as "one of the world's heaviest big wave competitions". This is because Teahupoo is the only known natural wave break in the world that breaks below sea level. It is also "renowned for being the deadliest competition associated with surfing to this present date". The Billabong Pro Teahupoo has not claimed any lives since the surf competition began in 1999, but the wave has claimed lives over the years. Billabong Pro Teahupoo location The surfing event takes place in Teahupo’o, a village on the south-west coast of the island of ...
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Keala Kennelly
Keala Kennelly (born August 13, 1978) is a professional surfer, DJ, and actress from Kauai, Hawaii. After spending a decade ranked in the top 10 on thASP World Championship Tour (WCT) Kennelly took a break from the tour in 2007 to explore her passions for acting and music, including a recurring role as a surfer in the 2007 series ''John from Cincinnati''. She continues to DJ and compete as a big wave surfer. Surfing career Kennelly turned professional at the age of 17 and soon began surfing in the World Qualifying Series (WQS). After finishing 2nd in the world on the WQS Tour in 1997, she was accepted to the World Championship Tour and quickly began earning victories at some of the tour's biggest events. Kennelly began a string of successful visits to Teahupoo, Tahiti in 1998 when she won the Gotcha Black Pearl Women's Pro. She would go on to win 3 more times in Teahupoo in 2000, 2002, and 2003. 2003 was a breakout year for Kennelly as she peaked at number 1 in the WCT rankin ...
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John John Florence
John "John John" Alexander Florence (born October 18, 1992) is an American professional surfer. He is known as "one of the most dominant pipe surfers of his era" and won back-to-back world titles on the 2016 World Surf League and 2017 World Surf League Men's Championship Tour. He is the first Hawaii-born surfer to win back-to-back world titles since the late Andy Irons and one of five to ever achieve the feat. In 2019, Florence qualified to represent the United States at the 2020 Summer Olympics in surfing. From 2018 he has been struggling with some knee injuries. Early life Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, as the oldest of his brothers Ivan, Tal and Nathan Florence, Florence grew up in Hale'iwa in an ocean-side house at Banzai Pipeline. He was introduced to surfing by his mother, Alexandra, who is a surfer herself. With his mother's help, Florence first rode on a surfboard when he was six-months old, and he was surfing on his own by the age of five. He also enjoys skateboarding, sn ...
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Laird Hamilton
Laird John Hamilton (born March 2, 1964) is an American big-wave surfer, co-inventor of tow-in surfing, and an occasional fashion and action-sports model and actor. He is married to Gabrielle Reece, a professional volleyball player, television personality, and model. Early life Laird was born Laird John Zerfas in San Francisco on March 2, 1964, in an experimental salt-water sphere at UCSF Medical Center designed to ease the mother's labor. His father, L. G. Zerfas, left the family before his first birthday. While he was an infant, Laird and his mother, Joann (née Zyirek), moved to Hawaii. In 1967, while still a young boy living on Oahu, Laird met with 1960s surfer William Stuart "Bill" Hamilton, a bachelor at the time, on Pūpūkea beach on the North Shore. Bill Hamilton was a surfboard shaper and glasser on Oahu in the 1960s and 1970s and owned a small business handmaking custom, high-performance surfboards for the Oahu North Shore big wave riders of the era. The two became ...
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Ben Severson
Ben Severson is a Sandy Beach bodyboarder. He was the 1986 world bodyboarding champion.Severson, Ben with Jake Grubb (1986). Bodyboard Handbook. Newport Beach, California: Grubb Stake Media Ltd. ASIN: B000GKJSQ6 Biography In the early 1980s, Severson had been riding the Morey Boogie Mach 7-7, the first slick-bottomed board designed by Tom Morey. In 1984 Severson began experimenting with transitional rails and changing the size of his boards as well. Morey Boogie sent him blanks that he began to customize, in particular to aid surfing in large surf at Pipeline.Pye, Owen (2013). Born to Boogie - Legends of Bodyboarding. Page 22. Newquay, UK: Orca Publications. By 1986 Severson was becoming recognized as a developer of innovative board designs by the industry and that year was his most successful competitively as he won both the 1986 Morey World Championship and the National Pro/Am. In 1987 Severson signed with bodyboard manufacturer BZ and he soon released his first mass-produ ...
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Mike Stewart (bodyboarder)
Mike Stewart (born 1963) is a nine-time World Champion bodyboarder, one of the early pioneers of the bodyboarding sport, a pioneer of big-wave tow-in surfing and also a champion bodysurfer. Having ridden bodyboards since the inception of the sport, Stewart is the most experienced bodyboarder currently on the tour. He has won the annual Banzai Pipeline event a record 11 times, from which 9 earned him the world title, and has been crowned the Pipeline Bodysurfing Classic champion a record 15 times. He is the only bodyboarder to have competed in the Banzai Pipeline event since 1982. He has received the title ''Mister Pipeline'' for being the best wave rider of any kind: the only non stand-up surfer to achieve this accolade. Along with fellow bodyboarder Ben Severson, Stewart pioneered surfing Teahupo'o in the late 1980s. This location has since gone on to become a premier global big-wave surfing destination on the WSL circuit. Stewart is also an accomplished bodysurfer, having ...
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Bodyboarding
Bodyboarding is a water sport in which the surfer rides a bodyboard on the crest, face, and curl of a wave which is carrying the surfer towards the shore. Bodyboarding is also referred to as ''Boogieboarding'' due to the invention of the "Boogie Board" by Tom Morey in 1971. The average bodyboard consists of a short, rectangular piece of hydrodynamic foam. Bodyboarders typically use swim fins for additional propulsion and control while riding a breaking wave. Origin Bodyboarding originates from an ancient form of riding waves (surfing) on one's belly. Indigenous Polynesians rode "''alaia''" (pronounced ah-lie-ah) boards either on their belly, knees, or feet (in rare instances). ''Alaia'' boards were generally made from the wood of ''Acacia koa'' and varied in length and shape. They are distinct from the modern stand-up surfboards in that they had no ventral fins. Captain Cook recorded seeing Hawaiian villagers riding such boards when he came to Hawaii in 1778. The boards he witn ...
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World Surf League
The World Surf League (WSL) is the governing body for professional surfers and is dedicated to showcasing the world's best talent in a variety of progressive formats. The World Surf League was originally known as the International Professional Surfing founded by Fred Hemmings and Randy Rarick in 1976. IPS created the first world circuit of pro surfing events. In 1983 the Association of Surfing Pros took over management of the world circuit. In 2013, the ASP was acquired by ZoSea, backed by Paul Speaker, Terry Hardy, and Dirk Ziff. At the start of the 2015 season, the ASP changed its name to the World Surf League.ASP Announces World Surf League: Letter from CEO, 12 September 2014
(accessed 28 November 2014)




Malik Joyeux
Malik Joyeux (31 March 1980 – 2 December 2005) was an accomplished all-around waterman and a professional Big Wave surfer. Known by many as the "petit prince", the Footedness, goofy-foot surfer often gained attention for charging the treacherous barrels at Teahupoo, Tahiti. He was credited in 2003 with the Billabong XXL Tube of the Year for riding one of the largest waves ever to be surfed in history. Joyeux was one of Tahiti's best known professional surfers and was featured on the cover of Surfer (magazine), Surfer Magazine's 2004 "Big Issue". Early life Joyeux was born in France and moved to French Polynesia at a young age, where his mother Hélène raised her three children on the tropical island of Moorea. He started surfing at the age of 8. For years his older brother Teiva, little sister Tylane and mother Hélène lived in a big hut near Haapiti on Moorea with no luxuries. It had no walls, just a wooden structure with a roof, surrounded by ferns and palm trees, and the o ...
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Tube Riding
Tube riding is a term used by surfers to describe riding well inside the curve or barrel of a finely-shaped breaking wave. Under the right conditions, waves in some areas, such as the Banzai Pipeline in Hawaii, form a moving "tube" or cylinder as they break. The most straightforward way to tube ride is by body surfing. By riding the waves on his or her belly without a board, a body surfer may access the tube with relative ease, even in the case of a moderately small barreling wave. It is also possible to tube ride using a boogie board, surfboard A surfboard is a narrow plank used in surfing. Surfboards are relatively light, but are strong enough to support an individual standing on them while riding an ocean wave. They were invented in ancient Hawaii, where they were known as ''papa he'e ..., body surfing hand boards, or other wave riding implement. However, tube riding is an advanced skill and some surfers spend years (or even their entire lives) surfing without ever really ge ...
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World Championship Tour (WCT) Surfing
The World Surf League (WSL) is the governing body for professional surfers and is dedicated to showcasing the world's best talent in a variety of progressive formats. The World Surf League was originally known as the International Professional Surfing founded by Fred Hemmings and Randy Rarick in 1976. IPS created the first world circuit of pro surfing events. In 1983 the Association of Surfing Pros took over management of the world circuit. In 2013, the ASP was acquired by ZoSea, backed by Paul Speaker, Terry Hardy, and Dirk Ziff. At the start of the 2015 season, the ASP changed its name to the World Surf League.ASP Announces World Surf League: Letter from CEO, 12 September 2014
(accessed 28 November 2014)

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Billabong (clothing)
Billabong International Limited is an Australian company focused on surfing, primarily a clothing retailer that also produces accessories, such as watches and backpacks, and skateboard and snowboard products under other brand names. Founded in 1973 by Gordon and Rena Merchant, the company first traded on the Australian Securities Exchange in August 2000. The name "billabong" is derived from the Wiradjuri word ''bilabaŋ'' that refers to a "creek that runs only during the rainy season". As of September 2013, Von Zipper, and Element were two of the prominent brands that Billabong owns. Honolua Surf Company, Kustom, Palmers Surf, Xcel, Tigerlily, Sector 9, and RVCA were the company's other brands. In 2018, Billabong International Limited was acquired by Boardriders, Inc, owner of rival brand Quiksilver. From late 2012 onwards, following the company's decline in the period since 2008, Billabong International has been the subject of several protracted bidding and takeover proc ...
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