A few days ago, I wrote Nic von Rupp a quick text. I was planning on being in Portugal for the Perfect Chapter event (which, in my eyes, is the best one-day contest in the world), and I was hoping to meet up with him for a surf.
“Fuck,” he said in a voice message. “I’m hurt actually. But maybe see you afterwards?”
I wasn’t surprised that he was hurt — Portugal had been positively on fire during the previous weeks, and Nic had surfed Nazaré multiple times and even won the Nazaré Challenge — but I could hear the disappointment in his voice. Then another swell popped up on the radar, and despite his injured ribs and a doctor’s recommendation that he skip it, Nic could not resist.
“I was supposed to be out for the season due to a rib injury,” he explained. “But after seeing the huge swell approaching Nazaré… I knew it was a swell I couldn’t miss out on. So I called up Lucas Chumbo for another Nazaré round.”
The swell was truly massive: 23 feet at 21 seconds with perfect offshore winds, it was shaping up to be one of the biggest days yet. Chumbo, who was in Hawaii, received a call from Nic and hopped on a plane to get back to Portugal. And, as usual, the two of them did things that only a handful of surfers in the world can even consider.