Last night at a world premiere in Huntington Beach, California, the Australian stuntman Robbie Maddison revealed his latest game: surfing the world's heaviest wave, Teahupoo, on a customised motorbike.
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It was absurdism and bravado mixed with the smart branding of a shoe company. Some thought it was fake, as in, how can a 100kg machine stay afloat long enough to ride a wave, but I was sold, gobbling hooks, lines and sinkers. I knew enough of the players involved in the back end to have faith that they'd never stake their careers on a prank.
As for Teahupoo, this was a brave choice of wave, but unsurprising given Maddison's penchant for the lethal. Once, he even jumped the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Six months later he backflipped over London Bridge.
Teahupoo, of course, is the wave that features on every news feed from roughly May to October every year, with photos of little surfers juxtaposed against comically monstrous, but dazzlingly beautiful tropical, waves.
Injuries aren't just common at Teahupoo, they're likely. I was paddling back out after a wave, once, and the water simply drained off all around me leaving me paddling me on coral.
To be on a motorbike out there was certainly tweaking limits.
And it was real.
The motorbike, as it turned out, was a modified KTM250 SX. It had been fitted with skis that had little fins at the bottom to act as rudders and a paddle steamer-like back tyre. Maddison had chosen the simple two-stroke KTM250 'cause it was less likely to have mechanical issues in the water as opposed to a four-stroker.
Ever wonder how a 100kg machine stayed afloat long enough to conquer Teahupoo? Photo: Beach Grit
The water-bike was first tested on a 12-kilometre stretch in San Diego's Mission Bay. But San Diego, as anyone even remotely au fait wit the ocean will tell you, ain't Tahiti and Mission Bay certainly isn't Teahupoo.
At one point, Maddison was hit by a wave at Teahupoo straight out of the west. These are the waves the best surfers chase. They fold straight after takeoff and provide the most opportunities for photos or extreme experience. In my five campaigns at Teahupoo I deftly avoided the west bombs, riding, instead, the tamer waves that came from the south and bent out to sea.
Maddison says the wave nearly killed him.
"There I was on a motorcycle, with the worst thing that could possibly happen," Maddison told Rolling Stone magazine.
"My friends and crew were completely rattled, having thought that I had drowned in the wave. It's the gnarliest thing I have ever been through."
