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Outside Magazine December 2004
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Outside’s All Stars
Laird Hamilton
Big-Wav Surfer

By Daniel Duane

Laird Hamilton
Laird Hamilton (Peggy Sirota)
"BOOM!" BELLOWS LAIRD HAMILTON as a 20-foot wave explodes off the sea cliffs on Maui's northern coast, spraying foam into the rosy dawn sky. The greatest big-wave surfer on the planet, and perhaps the greatest of all time, Hamilton is shirtless at the helm of his camo-green jet boat. A dozen surfboards are piled in the bow, bouncing with the chop, and mile-long wave bands are rolling through the blue Pacific.

"Boom!" he yells again, pointing to a craggy lava outcropping 100 yards off the bow. "Isn't that great! We call it Dynamite Rock." His white-toothed grin turns crazy with exhilaration as he recounts a time several years ago when he convinced filmmaker Sonny Miller to shoot him as he scrambled onto Dynamite Rock, hid under a boulder, and let waves detonate all around him. It was
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all just for fun—part of Hamilton's "Hey, watch this" approach to serious risk—until the pull of a receding wave began sucking him off the rocks. "I got caught and drilled," Hamilton recalls. "It wasn't as dramatic as it looked, but it was still pretty exciting."

Now the 40-year-old Hamilton steers the boat straight for another Maui landmark: Jaws, the infamous deep-water break that routinely unleashes 40- and 50-foot monsters. Long considered unsurfable, Jaws was conquered in 1993 after Hamilton and some buddies decided to use jet skis to tow surfers into the waves—a move that marked the start of Hamilton's transformation into who he is now: the reigning big dog of surfing. With athlete-model wife Gabrielle Reece, a 14-month-old daughter, and the kind of physique American boys dream of seeing in the mirror, Hamilton boasts the surf world's most outsized personality and most recognizable face. He trains harder than everyone else, takes wilder risks, stars in more surf movies, and—with savvy, self-made ambition—brings more innovation and energy to the sport.

But all of this is ancient history—that is, pre-2004. This year, Hamilton elevated himself into a new realm of athletic stardom. His prime-time attention came packaged in a July 60 Minutes appearance—via waterproof live radio-feed headset straight from a west-Maui wave—and through silver-screen exposure in Riding Giants. Hollywood chiseled Hamilton onto the Mount Rushmore of big-wave riding, alongside the great Hawaiian legends and 1960s big-wave pioneer Greg Noll.

Which explains why this bronzed, six-foot-three, 220-pound specimen of physical perfection is having so much fun in his jet boat. Even as he's out here goofing off, carpenters are framing his new 3,500-square-foot house in Haiku, just up the road from Jaws; his new production company, BamMan Productions, won the Best Film award at Park City's X-Dance Action Sports Festival earlier this year for a TV pilot called The Ride, starring Laird; and he's still right here on Maui, still in the water, still refusing to compromise the life he loves. After so many big breaks, why should he? There's little arguing that 2004 has been the Year of Laird.


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DANIEL DUANE is the author of Caught Inside: A Surfer's Year on the California Coast. His second novel, A Mouth Like Yours (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), will be published in spring 2005.
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