It takes a lot to be a living legend. You need to have spent a very big part of your life doing things that no one else can do. You need to be a person who has done such incredible things in the past that you’ve shaped what the present looks like. Much like Shane Dorian has done.
Well, before Shane had achieved living legend status, he was working on achieving it. And Pipeline was the place to tick off a few boxes, so when he was fresh out of high school, he showed up at Benji Weatherly’s house. That house, which acted as a crash pad for Shane, Kelly Slater, and the rest of the Momentum Generation in the ’90s, looked out at Pipeline. It would eventually become the Volcom house. But back then, it was just Benji’s parent’s house.
On a very big day, with a little coaxing from the late Todd Chesser, Shane Dorian decided to paddle out to second reef. He and Chesser thought it might be fun to make a game out of it and see who could catch the first bomb.
“I remember paddling out and just tripping,” Dorian remembers. “The waves were huge for me at the time.”
Before he could get all the way out to where he was heading, however, a wave came to him. “It was pretty deep,” Dorian said. “I whipped it and somehow kind of coasted into a little chip shot and stood up, and the whole thing lined up. I remember feeling so overly committed and just tripping. I’d never, like, been on that big of a double up at Pipe before.”
It was just one of many enormous tubes that Dorian would see the inside of over the course of his career, but it still sticks out in his head to this day.
“I just got this warehouse size barrel and got blown out like crazy and claimed it. All my friends were so psyched for me,” he said. “You know, when you’re a kid, there’s those little things you kind of mark down in your brain, like ‘do that, do that, do that.’ It was a confidence booster, for sure. It was definitely one of those ones that are unforgettable.”
The video above is part of a series created by the World Surf League for the 2023 Billabong Pro Pipeline that showcases a few people committed, skilled, and just plain lucky enough to have caught a wave that they’ll never forget at Pipe. Here’s Kelly Slater’s and here’s John John Florence’s, just to wet your whistle.
