If you’re a fan of professional surfing, you probably watched the Vans Pipe Masters. The winners weren’t all that much of a surprise — John John Florence and Moana Jones-Wong are always favorites in that particular lineup — but the format was a little different than usual. The waves, though, were what everyone hoped for, especially on finals day. It wasn’t easy out there, by any means.
“Before any of the Pipe Masters finalists could even catch a wave, a six wave cleanup set pushed through the reef,” wrote Off Da Lip on YouTube. “These were some extremely difficult conditions. From the water, everything must’ve looked like a closeout as maybe 1/10 waves were surfable.”
The event wasn’t free of injuries. Pipeline is inherently dangerous, but that’s what makes it so exciting. Eimeo Czermak was rushed to the hospital after a particularly bad wipeout, and the cleanup set you see in the video above was a good reminder to everyone in the contest that you never know when the ocean is going to serve up a set a little bigger than expected.
