Ross Clarke-Jones added another scar to the mantel at The Eddie. Photos: Instagram//Screenshot
Ross Clarke-Jones is not a man who is known for doing things halfway. His life generally moves at a breakneck pace, filled with enormous waves and anything that makes his heart beat faster. There’s no place quite like Waimea Bay to do that. At the recent Eddie event, however, that breakneck pace nearly cost him his hand.
Clarke-Jones is no stranger to injury. He’s been concussed, broken his nose, back, ribs, shoulder, and ruptured a bicep tendon. He destroyed his ankle in a horrific rope-swing injury on Australian Survivor, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The 2024/2025 Eddie was, as it always is when it runs, a good event. “Good” in big wave surfing means dangerous conditions, though, and Waimea pulled no punches. Laura Enever took a sharp edge of a surfboard in her leg and ended up in the hospital after lifeguards wrapped a tourniquet around her leg so she didn’t bleed out. Ross Clarke-Jones, who is 58 years old (not that he acts his age), had his hand shredded to bits after his surfboard snapped and the fiberglass opened him up.
According to Ross’s son, Kanan Clarke-Jones, the nurse attending to his wounds said he was about an inch away from losing his hand. “The wave snapped [Clarke-Jones’s] board in half and Ross thinks it was the broken fiberglass that shredded his hand,” Kanan wrote on Instagram. “Nurse said the cut was so deep that it was close to being amputated.”
Despite the apparent severity of his injuries, Clarke-Jones laughed it off. The only indicator that something was different was that he smoked a cigarette while getting put back together.
The big wave legend — and 2001 Eddie winner — will certainly come back from this, and knowing him, it won’t be the last injury. He’s willing to pay to play, though, and it’s proof that he loves the game.
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