Brock Little is a fighter. Photo: Instagram/Brock Little
Brock Little recently took to Instagram to make a devastating announcement. “I have cancer,” he wrote. “It sucks, but I’m taking chemo. You do what you can. Can’t believe the person in the picture is me. I look in the mirror, and I feel like it’s not me.”
Little is a legend in the surf world. He’s cemented himself solidly in the upper echelons of big wave surfing. Born in 1967 in Napa, California, he ended up in Hawaii in the early ’70s. By the turn of the decade, he had begun his ascent to the top. In 1986, at the age of 19, he landed in fourth at the Quik event at massive Waimea surfing against much more experienced surfers including Ken Bradshaw, Mark Foo, and Clyde Aikau, according to the Encyclopedia of Surfing.
By the early ’90s, he was named as one of the best surfers at Waimea by his peers, and spent the next few years proving his mettle in serious waves of consequence. As well as surfing, he became an accomplished stunt man and surf writer, penning over twenty stories for various magazines.
If there is one thing for certain about Brock’s cancer diagnosis, it is that he will fight it. His mindset towards life in general is perfectly summed up in an answer he gave to Matt Warshaw, who asked him if he had a death wish. “No, not at all,” he responded. “It’s just that if I get myself into a radical experience—getting in a fight, or driving fast, or riding a huge wave—and live through it, I’m totally stoked. I don’t mind bleeding. I don’t mind getting held underwater. I’ve walked away from everything that’s happened so far and been better off every time.”
