Ever heard of Clint Kimmins? Probably not, but there are a million people who charge that you haven’t heard of. They’re the most interesting ones—the ones who charge for nothing other than the love of charging. Charging, of course, eventually leads to some pretty bad wipeouts, like the one you see above. Back in November of 2017, Kimmins left his home on the Gold Coast of Australia for Maverick’s. He paddled for a very windy looking wave, committed fully, realized that was no possible way he was making it, and pushed the eject button. Dom Padua was there to film the whole thing, and now it’s an entry in the Wipeout of the Year Award category of the 2018 WSL Big Wave Awards.
Kimmins has a very interesting story. Way back in 2004, when he was just 20 years old, Kimmins was looking down the barrel of a very bright surfing future. Rip Curl was his main sponsor and the World Tour looked like a very real possibility. He was gaining acclaim for his surfing in big waves. Then, during a party at a surf club in Queensland, a fight broke out. “He ended up using a broken glass bottle to defend himself, stabbing a man first in the neck and then in the back,” wrote Billy Wilson on Surf Europe. The man who was stabbed took him to court, where a jury found that Kimmins had due cause for self-defence, but charged him with unlawful wounding. Despite character witness testimony from Kelly Slater and Taj Burrow, he wound up spending six months in jail.
Rip Curl dropped him and his surfing career derailed. As of 2015, however, Kimmins hasn’t skipped a beat. He became an accomplished triathlete and still (as evidenced by the video above) surfs very, very big waves.
