Big wave season at Nazaré has a life of its own. While waves like Maverick’s and Jaws are no less heavy than the behemoth in Europe, Nazaré stands alone when it comes to wave height. The trap this sets up for surfers on that side of the Atlantic this time of year is that the conversation immediately following any and every monster swell at Praia do Norte focuses on one of two things: claims of a potential new world record and/or claims of somebody riding a 100-foot wave.
Both of those possibilities are always exciting and this weekend’s session didn’t escape that trap of world record-claims. Lucas Chianca had the highlight of the day and we are already seeing the chatter that his wave may have topped the 26.21 m (86 feet) record ridden by Sebastian Steudtner.
Chianca’s was a monster, for sure, and it would be a viral clip with or without the potential of setting a new benchmark. But the thing with these “world record” claims coming the instant a guy kicks out is that we see and hear them way too often and the process for verifying their official size takes so long that an entirely new big-wave season will go by before we know for certain. That means we have another year-plus of world record claims and conjecture until said ride gets a final stamp.
In Steudtner’s case, a full 19 months passed between his ride and the Guinness Book of World Records making its official measurement and declaration. The big wave season between Steaudtner’s October 2020 session and the May 2022 announcement churned out a few notable and historic swells that included an unthinkable ride from Mason Barnes in February of that year.
The news around that ride had “100-foot wave” in just about every headline but here we are two years later ready to crown the new world record. And even after Guinness measured Steudtner’s wave at 86 feet, we still had social media accounts like ESPN’s Sportscenter sharing videos measuring it at…115 feet.
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The point here is that when somebody catches the wave of their life at any other spot on the planet, we instantly know it’s special and celebrate it for that. There’s an eye test and a gut feeling we all share when Peter Mel throws his arms up mid-tube at Maverick’s, or the first time we saw Laird sitting back in the belly of the Millenium Wave, that tells the surf world the game was just changed.
But how do we really know what to celebrate when a generational talent like Lucas Chianca catches a massive wave and the first thing a videographer wants to do is slap a buzz phrase on their upload to make sure people will watch — a premature claim because it won’t be proven or disproven for at least a year?
One thing we can count on is that Lucas Chianca just rode a wave that’s going to stick with him for the rest of his life. That’s something to celebrate no matter what the tape measure says.
