Tap the mind of any big wave guy and mostly it’ll circle back to a grainy poster that would’ve hung on their wall at one point or other of their formative years.
Brock Little, Waimea Bay Eddie Aikau, 1990. There’s really not much more that needs to be said, except the story itself. I listened like a giddy schoolkid as Brock recounted that story and thought he’d no doubt told a million times already, it was delivered with the same energy as if he’d just been blasted up the beach at Waimea.
And get this…the shot itself (well one version it anyway) sat undeveloped in a roll of film for a month. As photographer Scott Winer later explained, “That’s what we did back then. We’d shoot all winter but wouldn’t develop the film ‘till we got back to the mainland.”
Anyway…back to the story.
“Aaron Napoleon was just screaming at me, calling me every goddam name under the sun and just screaming, ‘You go you fucking pussy, you go, go, go.’ There was no doubt in my mind I was going to make that wave.”
From the get-go, there was never a doubt in Brock Little’s mind he was going to surf Waimea and by the age of the 13 during the El Nino year of 1983, he’d had enough looking.
“Every day, I’d come home from school and the surf would be 15-20 feet and I’d be freakin’, wanting to surf it so bad,” he later recalled.
“Finally, I just went, You know what? Fuck it. I rode my bike down and paddled out.
Fast forward to 1990 and the all too familiar sound of horns honking and onlookers whistling starts to fill up The Bay.
The adrenalin gets the better of all but two competitors.
“The thing is at big Waimea, when those big ones come through, not many people want anything to do with ‘em,” recalls Brock.
“That wave came through and everyone just bolted for the horizon, everyone except (Ken) Bradshaw and me. We were side by side and both paddling for it. I took off, he took off and…”
Stop the tape right there.
Two careers are seconds away from taking two very different turns. One will be righteously bathed in glory for eternity; the other left to ponder what if and temporarily wander the desert like Moses, searching for internal redemption.
“The biggest mistake of my competitive career was not catching that wave,” recalls Ken Bradshaw, 24 years after the event.
“He took off and fell and got all the glory, I kicked out cos I knew there was a much bigger one behind it. But it just didn’t turn out. Biggest mistake of my career.”
Back to Little though.
“I knew I was in a good spot to catch that wave, just turns out I wasn’t in a good spot to ride it,” he reckoned.
“Either way, I paddled my ass off, I clearly remember just wanting it so bad and it was letting me in.”
Little managed to get to his feet and assumes the same position he’d done countless times before.
“And then I hit a bump, and all of a sudden I was just skimming down the face like a rock over shallow water. And the whole time I was just looking up, thinking to myself, If that lip lands on me I’m dead, but luckily it didn’t”
Little then has a few seconds to contemplate what’s in store as he watches the lip thrown over him.
“I remember thinking I was either get my ass kicked real good or I was going to die. Either way I was at peace. I put myself in that position and I was happy with that.”
“But, and I don’t know if I was hallucinating or what at this point, but I then remember being sucked up and over and for a split second I could see the whole of Waimea Bay. Right then, I just caught a breath and I think from that point, I knew I was going to be ok.”
Thousands lining the shore of Waimea Bay see the wipe-out, but it’s the resulting image of Little, teetering on the brink of disaster that will end up on walls worldwide for years to come.
“I remember walking up the beach after it, and everyone was looking at me like they’d seen a ghost,” he says.
“But you know, I’m so proud of that moment. I don’t look back at it and think, ‘What the fuck was I thinking?’ I’m proud of wanting that wave and I wanted it real bad.”
Not that his reputation ever needed it, but the moment and a glorious attempt at a tube ride moments later elevates Little to the top tier of manliness amongst the most manliness of line-ups the world has ever known.
“It’s the same with Healey, Dorian, Jamie, Twiggy and all those guys,” he reckoned.
“You either have it or you don’t. You either want it or you don’t. I mean, I was in pretty good shape at the time but I knew some of my peers were training harder or what not but you’d see them out on the big days and you could see that fear in their eyes.”
And as for Bradshaw…
“I don’t think I ever have gotten over that moment and I’ve never really spoken to Brock about it either. How about that?”
Years later, Brock circled back to how he viewed his legacy at Waimea. By this point, every heavy hitter in big wave circles pointed directly at him, and that crazy poster, as the main influence when it came to getting jiggy in the juice.
“Oh yeah, I mean, that’s great and I love it,” was his reply.
“They may have picked up some of my attitude, but they already had it in their hearts. You can’t teach big-wave surfing to somebody that doesn’t want it. I just feel like I was one of the best guys in a certain period of time and I have no problem sayin’ that. But, there have been better guys before and after me. If my little note I leave says He was the best guy to surf the Bay for a couple years in the late eighties and early nineties, well, I’ll take that. I’m fucking stoked.
Read: Brock Little loses battle with cancer
Brock Little, 1967-2016 from ENCYCLOPEDIA of SURFING videos on Vimeo.
