With the world popularization of surfing, you may already know a lot about this ancient sport. Here we list some curiosities for you to go even deeper.
#1 The global surfing industry is evaluated at $ 10 billion and has more than 20 million participants worldwide.
#2 Huntington Beach, California, hosts the annual City Surf Dog contest, which raises money for animal welfare organizations. Dogs are judged based on their confidence in the wave and the time they can stand while riding the wave.
#3 Kelly Slater, 11-time world champion, holds the surfer record for making the most money in a season. It happened in 2009 when he ended the year with $3 million.
#4 The record for the longest time surfing a wave is 3h55min. Panamanian surfer Gary Saavedra established the achievement in 2011 when he surfed an artificial wave created by a speedboat.
#5 Kelly Slater was the first surfer to achieve two perfect 10s (when all the judges give the maximum score) in a World Circuit heat in Tahiti in 2005.
#6 The record for the longest natural wave ever surfed is 37 minutes in a pororoca, a tidal wave in the Amazon River.
#7 In one of the most terrible surfing injuries, South African world champion Martin Potter almost died in 1997, when the tip of his board made a 15 cm cut in his belly. The cut was so deep that part of Martin’s intestine left the abdomen. The surfer needed 40 stitches and spent three months out of the water.
#8 Donald Dettloff is the guy who has the most boards in the world. There are 647 of them, located in Hawaii, where he lives. It took Donald 15 years to make the collection, and some boards are used as part of a fence around the surfer’s home.
#9 The record for the largest number of people surfing on a single board is 66. In 2015, all these guys climbed on a huge board of about 42 feet and 1,300 pounds in Huntington Beach, California. They stood for 12 seconds.
#10 In 2001, CJ Hobgood was a world champion without a single victory. The circuit had only five stages because several were canceled for security after 9/11.
#11 The first woman to catch a wave in Waimea Bay, Hawaii, was Linda Benson. In 1959, at just 15 years old, the American paddled the most revered surf peak of the time. Linda was also the first woman to appear on the cover of a surfing magazine.
#12 The record for the highest number of surfboards stacked in a car is 282. The car traveled just 30.4 meters, near Santa Barbara, California.
#13 Kurtis Loftus owns the record for the longest “surfing marathon”. On October 26-27, 2011, when he was 50 years old, he surfed nonstop for 29h01min in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.
