Photo: Miguel Sacramento//WSL
Lucas Chianca won’t declare himself as the best big wave surfer on the planet but he knows he’s high on the list. One could make an argument he’s top dog though. He’s unquestionably in the highest tier of today’s elite big wave talents. He holds five wins at the Nazaré Big Wave Challenge including two back-to-back titles for “Best Male Performance” and “Best Team Performance.” His competitive performance there alone warrants a spot in today’s “best” conversation but even in freesurfs, Chumbo has a knack for turning in rides that catch the world’s attention.
There is something important he won’t hesitate to declare though.
“I don’t know if I’m the best big wave surfer in the world, but I’m happy and super proud of myself,” he says. “I can’t wait to see the future because the present is amazing, and I’m doing everything I dreamed of with a whole heart”.
The comment comes from the new documentary, Chumbo: Made for Big Waves, which digs into the 28-year-old surfer’s balance of family life and big wave surfing since becoming a father in 2022. The film paints a clear picture of the Brazilian surfer as a family man above all else these days.
“It was insane. It was the best feeling in my life. Better than any wave, better than any swell, better than the biggest, the best, the longest wave of my life,” he says of meeting his newborn daughter for the first time. He admits that surfing — his commitment to it, his obligations to his competitive career — more or less took a backseat to fatherhood when it came to where he wanted to be on any given day.
“The first time I realized that I had changed was when I went to Tahiti after Maitê was born,” he remembers. “That was my first trip as a dad, and my first swell as a big wave surfer and a dad. As a dad right now, I want to give 200 percent, go [to competitions] and come back home.”
Being a dad hasn’t taken Lucas Chianca out of the game, obviously. Just this February he caught a wave at Nazaré that immediately got a lot of “100-foot” and “world record” claims.
“Maybe this wave could be a 100-foot wave, but who knows? I know a wave I caught in October 2020, which was the biggest wave of my life, came in close to 80 feet. This felt bigger, but I’ve never had a wave measured in my life, so I have no clue,” he told The Inertia. “It felt great to be part of the intensity. Those are the days we realize we still have so much to learn at Nazaré – and when we learn so much.”
Watch the full documentary from Red Bull here.
