Brazil’s Rodrigo Koxa catches the biggest wave ever surfed

A Brazilian surfer caught an 80-foot wave; the same day, an English surfer broke his back

Welcome to Plain English, the podcast that goes at the right speed for English learners. Today’s topic is surfing in Nazaré, Portugal. Two surfers had, shall we say, divergent outcomes, divergent outcomes back in November, but they both came home with awards at the World Surfing League awards last month. At the end of the show, we’ll talk about the English phrase “silver lining.” That’s a really common phrase, so if you don’t know it, make sure you keep listening to learn the term “silver lining.”

Today’s episode is number 46, so you can read the transcript online at PlainEnglish.com/46. Today’s episode is a little longer than usual, so let’s dive right in—pun intended—to today’s main topic.

Brazilian surfer catches a huge wave

Have you heard the phrase “to catch a wave”? Rodrigo Koxa did just that—in fact, he caught the biggest wave ever on November 8th, 2017. That’s when the Brazilian surfer caught an 80-foot tall wave off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal.

And for his efforts, he was presented with the World Surf League’s Quiksilver XXL Biggest Wave Award last month. The award comes with a $25,000 prize—and bragging rights, of course. Not only that, but the Guinness Book of World Records certified this wave as the biggest one ever surfed. Koxa said of his achievement, “I’m just so happy and this is the best day of my life. It’s a dream come true.”

The previous world record was set in 2011 by Garrett McNamara, who surfed a 78-foot tall wave in the same place. For context, one story in a building is usually about nine to ten feet, so an eighty-foot wave is the equivalent of an eight- to nine-story building.

When I first read this, I had a couple of questions. First of all, how can you really measure the height of a wave? It’s liquid and it’s moving, so you can’t exactly go out and measure it with a ruler or anything. And second of all, how can we know if this is the largest wave surfed if there aren’t people around measuring all the waves people surf in a year?

Here’s what I found out. Measuring the waves is scientific, but, shall we say, not precise. It all starts with a photograph of the surfer on the wave, blown up to large scale for measurement. They then look at the picture of the wave compared with the size of the person riding it. If you know the height of the surfer, you can estimate the height of the wave from the photograph. Just one catch: Nobody rides a wave standing straight up, so you need to take into account the fact that the surfer is crouching, so he appears a little shorter in the picture than he really is.

Now maybe you can see why I think it’s scientific, but not exactly precise—there’s a lot of guesswork. The people at the World Surf League say that when they measure the official wave heights for the awards each year, they use photographs, a ruler, calipers—and a couple of beers for good measure. (I think that was a joke—the World Surf League is sponsored by Corona beer.)

I was also wondering how we can know if there were other, bigger waves surfed in a year if there isn’t anyone taking pictures of the surfers on the biggest waves all year. And the answer is, we can’t know for sure. The determination of the biggest wave surfed is made from nominations to the World Surf League, so if you catch a huge wave, but nobody is there to document it—well, it doesn’t count in the eyes of the record books. Several surfers have claimed that they’ve surfed higher waves, but they don’t have the photos to prove it. But when surfers go to the very biggest waves in the world, there’s usually a lot of people around to witness it and take pictures.

Nazaré is a surfing destination in Portugal, known for having some of the world’s biggest waves. That is thanks to an underwater canyon just off the coast. When waves come in from the ocean, the canyon often makes them much more pronounced.

Believe it or not, the biggest waves can be tracked ever since they’ve been far out in the ocean; sometimes, strong currents are identified weeks in advance. When the waves finally arrive, the surfers are ready. They have to be towed out on jet skis in order to catch the waves, since you can’t paddle onto them from shore. And it’s not just the surfers who come for the waves: there are dozens of spectators and photographers looking on from shore.

Needless to say, this is also dangerous. The shoreline is rocky and these enormous waves have tremendous force that you can’t swim against. If you lose your balance, you can get thrown against the water and knocked unconscious. Remember that record wave that Rodrigo Koxa caught? On the same day at Nazaré, another surfer, Andrew Cotton, was thrown from a wave and broke his back; he’ll need a year to recover. But there is a silver lining to Andrew’s story: at the World Surfing League awards, he was presented with the Wipeout of the Year award. Ouch!

When I first saw the story, it was just a couple of clips on the news, but I later found a 15-minute video about Nazaré on YouTube. It’s a news segment produced for the show 60 Minutes in Australia. I’ll post a link to the video in the show notes for this episode, so you can watch the video if you’re interested in seeing some of these waves.

Time to say a couple of quick hello’s to listeners in Japan today. Akane from Tokyo listens to Plain English on her morning jogs and she’s brushing up on her English to be able to help her two daughters, who are taking English in school. Brushing up means she’s refreshing her knowledge, since she studied English in school years ago. Andy from Konan gave us a nice review on Facebook. But he also wrote in with a request—he wants the web site translations in Japanese. So, right now you know we have translations of the hardest words and phrases from English to Portuguese, Chinese, Spanish and French on the web site, but Andy wants them in Japanese. Hang in there, Andy, I can’t promise anything right now, but I know there are a lot of listeners in Japan, so I won’t rule out adding Japanese to the web site in the near future. Andy and Akane, thank you “Domo arigatou” I think for saying hi and being in the Plain English audience. Anyone else that wants to connect on Facebook or Twitter, you can find us at PlainEnglishPod on both of those web sites.