What went down in the latter half of this year’s Tahiti Pro was the embodiment of the WSL’s highly-touted tagline – best surfers, best waves. Teahupo’o was nearly perfect, no doubt, but right before the contest window, the surf was so big that organizers were forced to call off the trials. And undoubtedly there will be a few more days when the place fires on all cylinders (er, cylinder) before the season is over. The point is this: for all the heroics of a live-streamed, toe-to-toe event, the waves that are often most remembered out at Teahupo’o are the Hail Marys that happen when no one is wearing a singlet, oftentimes when it’s only big-wave hellmen who want a taste.
The video above is in that spirit. In the compilation, filmmaker Ryan Moss puts together clips of three of the best paddle-in moments at Teahupo’o, he reckons, in the last few years. And spending much of the last year in the lineup there, he would know.
“It’s been a full year since I hopped on a plane set to land in French Polynesia,” says Moss. “In that year span, I was fortunate enough to have spent roughly 4 months out of the year living in that tropical paradise. I was even more fortunate to witness and document arguably (with the exception of Koa Rothman’s recent barrel) three of the best paddle waves ridden in the past several years.”
So, what do you reckon?
