Alo Slebir riding what might be a record breaking wave. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Alessandro “Alo” Slebir has made a real mark for himself in the big wave world, and on Christmas Eve, he carved his initials a little deeper in the tree by surfing an absolutely enormous wave at Maverick’s.
The Santa Cruz surfer knows Maverick’s well, having surfed there on most of the biggest swells over the last decade. The big wave surfer/construction worker has put in the work, and now he’s reaping the rewards.
The term “100-foot wave” gets thrown around every winter, and this year is no different: within a few hours of the footage of the wave hitting the internet, claims that the wave was 108-feet tall were bouncing all over the place. Measuring waves, however, is not an easy task, nor is it cut and dried. What is certain is that Slebir’s wave was very, very big.
“Definitely in the 100 foot range and definitely the largest wave I have ever seen since I began surfing Maverick’s in 1975,” Maverick’s pioneer Jeff Clarke told NBC. “It was an amazing swell.”
In a common refrain after a surfer rides a wave like this, Alo Slebir wasn’t all that aware that the wave he was riding was as big as it was.
“Every wave was gigantic, but there’s this feeling as a surfer when you are going down the face of a wave you’re going so fast that wave in particular there was so much water coming off the reef you could feel the wave wanting to go backwards,” he explained. “I’ll tell you it’s the fastest time ever on the surfboard it was just beautiful, one of the craziest rides I’ve ever had.”
Tow surfing is a partnership, and the ski pilots need to be just as dialed in as the surfers. Luca Padua steered Slebir into the wave you see here, and it could very well be a world record. As of this writing, Sebastian Steudtner’s 86 foot Nazaré wave is the biggest ever surfed, but the Maverick’s team claims that Slebir’s beat it.
“Using the same state of the art technology developed by Porsche engineering and team Steudtner under the same measurement,” they wrote on Instagram, [Slebir’s] wave he rode at Maverick’s on 12/23/24 measures in at 108 feet (32.9 meters) feet compared to Steudtner’s 86 feet (26.2 meters) the current world record. In the next few weeks we will confirm the height using the same method used to measure at Nazaré.”
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There are a lot of factors that go into measuring a wave’s height, but the Mav’s team thinks they’ve got that covered, too.
“Alo’s wave was captured from the water angle, both video by [Blakeney Sanford] and [Jack Sandler] and still image which is proved to be more accurate than the cliff angle which has proven to add at least 10 percent to the height of the wave. Either way, given the margin of error, the hundred-foot wave threshold may have now been ridden. And fittingly at the heaviest wave in the world.”
A handful of the world’s best have commented that Slebir’s wave does indeed beat the older record. “100 foot wave,” wrote Kai Lenny. “That is the world record,” Mason Barnes said. “Heavy!!!! 100 ft plus,” exclaimed Coco Nogales.
Whatever the exact number is, it’s fair to say that Alo Slebir has solidly cemented himself in the Maverick’s annals.
