Nic von Rupp has surfed many giant waves, but one was bigger than the rest. Photos: Instagram//Screenshot
Nic von Rupp has surfed a lot of huge waves in his life, but Storm Herminia created one wave so big it eclipsed all his others. And as you can already guess, the term “world record” is being thrown around.
“Did Nic von Rupp just quietly break the world record for biggest wave surfed?” Tudor Watches, one of von Rupp’s sponsors, asked without a hint of objectivity in a recent Instagram post. “Nic Von Rupp just surfed the biggest wave of his career—and quite possibly the biggest wave anywhere, ever.” Herminia hammered the big wave Mecca, pulsing with waves nearly 100 feet tall. According to the Tudor team, some clocked in at 98 feet.
“Two multi-parametric buoys provide real-time data transmission to the Instituto Hidrográfico of Portugal, and that day they measured the biggest waves ever,” Tudor continued. “The data is still being processed; two swells that Nic surfed could very well be among the biggest ever surfed at Nazaré — or even in the world.”
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Yes, Nic has been chasing his big wave dream for years and is always putting himself in position to take the title of biggest wave ever surfed. And being completely objective, this particular swell very well could have given him that wave.
Wave measurement, of course, is a sticky thing that’s been written about ad nauseam. Every year, the 100-foot mark is broken and unbroken. World records are awarded for waves ridden years prior. And although Nic certainly would like to have the record, it goes without saying that he’d be doing what he’s doing whether there were awards or not. We’ll have to wait and see how this ride measures up.
