Billabong Global XXL

Jaws, Maui, Hawaii Session,
25, 26 ...... November 2002

Billabong Global XXL make an historical start

Maui, Hawaii --

The Billabong Global XXL is a big-wave surfing competition and an invitation-only event limited to surfers who have demonstrated a long career of big wave and ocean rescue skills. The Billabong Global XXL competition provides a prize of $1,000 per foot of wave height (minimum of $60,000) for the biggest wave ridded each year anywhere in the world, based on the photographic evidence.

The Billabong Global XXL competition took an historical start this year with big swells hitting the surfing world from the Pacific to the Atlantic, producing some of the biggest waves ever successfully challenged along those coastlines. This week, the Hawaiian Islands received their own mammoth swell with the biggest waves of all focusing on the acclaimed Maui island break known as Jaws.

Some of the world´s big-wave surfers were on hand with their jet-powered watercraftin : Californian Mike Parsons (record holder of the biggest wave ever surfed in January 2001, with a 66 ft wave at Cortez Bank, CA), his tow-in partner Brad Gerlach, hawaiian pioneers Laird Hamilton, Darrick Doerner and Dave Kalama as well as Noah Johnson, (Haw) Cheyne Horan (Haw) and Ross Clarke-Jones (Aust).

The giant swell conicided with perfect weather conditions, the result was what many experts called the greatest day of big wave riding ever seen. The biggest waves of the day may have had lip-to-trough face heights over 60 feet at their tallest moments. The wave of Jaws is deceptively perfect but the human size bumps on the wave face caused both Cheyne Horan and Ross Clarke-Jones to suffer serious wipe-outs in the waves up to 60ft.

After his day at Jaws, Cheyne Horan stated "When you´re looking over the edge, it feels like you´re standing on a huge building getting ready to jump off. When that swell starts out at 30´-40´ and your riding it, you are just waiting for that thing to hit the reef and jack up to 60´-70´, sometimes 80´ as it stands straight up. It then feels like the building that you were standing on just crumbled from under yo and you are completely free falling."

"I got hit so many times I thought to myself, I am going to die here! My body went numb and limp, I was seeing stars and I felt like I was in a different place, like never before. I felt like I was on the other side, like I had died. You have to be prepared for the worst! If you don´t know what to expect, you shouldn´t be out there."

The Billabong Global XXL competition continues through March, when a panel of big wave experts will examine the images of the Jaws session -- along with all others entered between now and the end of March -- and decide a winner.

The Billabong Global XXL Awards is an invitation-only event limited to surfers who have demonstrated a long career of big wave and ocean rescue skills.

Go to www.billabongodyssey.com for more images and information.

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Tim Williams - Billabong Odyssey XXL

Big-Wave - Surfersvillage