LAD Rides The Biggest Wave Ever Surfed And It's Terrifying

Forget bodyboarding on pathetic waves off the Cornish coast, Guinness World Records just certified 'the largest wave ever surfed'.

The mammoth 78ft beast was surfed by big wave legend and LAD Garrett McNamara off Nazaré, Portugal. For some context, your average two-storey house is usually between 20 and 25 feet high. So, yeah, fuck that.

McNamara rode the wave back in 2011, but Guinness World Records has only just got around to certifying its title.

Mountainous waves like this have put Nazaré firmly on the surfing map, holding one of most electrifying big wave events on the circuit - the Nazaré Challenge.

The inaugural challenge ran between 15th October, 2016 and 28th February, 2017 and it witnessed this year's winner, Jamie Mitchell, smash successive sets of 30-40ft waves in December.

The WSL Big Wave tour sees the world's best surfers compete in overlapping events around the globe, spanning months to allow for ideal weather conditions to arise.

Unbelievably, the colossal Nazaré wave is not even the largest ever recorded.

That title goes to a titanic 100-footer which smashed Alaska's Lituya Bay in 1958, managing to devastate trees 1,700ft upslope.

Words: Brad Marshall

Topics: Surfing, Guinness World Record

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