Every season there’s a new claim: “largest wave ever surfed.” The whole process is kind of anticlimactic if you think about it. And this bomb from Lucas Chumbo is a perfect example. Why is that? Well, it was surfed more than two months ago and we’re just now diving into the conversation.
On January 8, 2022, Chianca swung into a wave (at about the 2:50 mark if you want to just skip right to the good stuff) so big he couldn’t have even faded all the way down to its base. It looks like he drops about halfway down the face before making a beeline for the shoulder. He barely escapes the lip chasing down after him.
If the first “unofficial” measurements are accurate then Chumbo really was only able to drop about halfway down the face before the wave started to collapse on itself. It’s tough to imagine the awareness and surfing sense required to pull that off. In all likelihood, Chumbo is only looking at where he’s headed, not turning around to see the largest lip on the planet about to crush him. At 97.3 feet tall, it would be just a smidge under that elusive 100-foot mark the whole of big-wave surfing is after. But it would also be a monstrous new world record, smashing Rodrigo Koxa’s, which topped 80 feet.
But if you’re looking for any of this to get sorted out soon, don’t hold your breath. The 97.3-foot claim is an early, we can’t stress this enough, unofficial measurement. Koxa set the current world record during a session in November of 2017. It wasn’t officially declared the biggest wave ever until April of the next year.
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