Rogue ‘bomb’ detonates latest big-wave debate

Massive waves pitched over the reef and boomed like thunder while wind and rain surged as Teahupoo loomed large -- big enough to kill and maim.

April 22 was one of those days at the famed Tahitian break, the first big day of the season, when paddle surfers yielded to an elite group of tow-in surfers who use personal watercraft to catch fast-moving swells.

Competition was intense, due in part to sponsors that demanded riders receive maximum exposure in the media. Internet video shows surfers tucked into curls and spit from tubes big enough to drive cars through. Some did well, others did not, including one human rag doll who caught an edge and tumbled over the falls in a reef-scraping wipeout that ripped flesh from his feet. Teahupoo (pronounced cho-pu) isn’t translated as “the hot head” for nothing.

And, like all really big days at Teahupoo, one surfer stood out. Raimana Van Bastolaer, 30, of Papara, Tahiti, dropped into a rogue “bomb,” disappeared beneath the lip and shot out an instant hero.

“I guess it was meant to be,” he says afterward. The gargantuan splash he made continues to ripple. Some question whether his ride rivals the best ever and could shake surf history.

Was Van Bastolaer’s ride the heaviest ever at Teahupoo, where waves are measured by thickness rather than height? Was it as heavy as Milak Joyeaux’s tube ride last year? Does it compare to Laird Hamilton’s harrowing barrel run four years ago, the day he was towed into a wave when everyone else was scared out of the water?

Comparisons at Teahupoo are dicey. Hamilton achieved surfing immortality that morning in August 2000 riding a monster upon which the slightest slip would likely have been fatal.

As one of tow surfing’s pioneers, Hamilton developed the customized foot strap-fitted boards so surfers could catch giant, fast waves that were once uncatchable. And by conquering Teahupoo on a supposedly unridable day, he emboldened others to taunt those round, hissing demons.

Hamilton was at Teahupoo on April 22 -- his partner, Dave Kalama, suffered the foot injury -- and he didn’t like what he saw: nearly two dozen surfers sharing five or six personal watercraft, jockeying in a frenzy, trying to catch the wave that could make them famous.

“Raimana is definitely worthy of that wave, don’t get me wrong,” Hamilton says. “But what’s happening is, a lot of companies are pushing their riders to go where they otherwise might not go. It’s the same thing with the [Billabong XXL Big Wave Awards] and other bounties. I resent the whole concept because when you start putting bounties up you’re just promoting danger.”

Teahupoo incites its own dread. Three months before Hamilton’s mad dash, a freak wave picked up a paddle surfer and slammed him onto the reef, puncturing his skull and breaking his neck and spine. He died three days later.

The hulking wave Hamilton rode into history was bigger than the ones he rode this year. It had a face measuring 25 feet and a lip nearly half as thick. It was widely regarded as the heaviest wave ever ridden.

Where does it rank four years later?

It’s still No. 1, says Evan Slater, editor of Surfing magazine. “Raimana’s wave stands out this year as the wave, but I wouldn’t put it against Laird’s wave mainly because that was the first real giant anyone got there. The wave itself was thicker and had the whole weight-of-the-world feel to it,” he says.

Hamilton agrees: “I’d have to go back there for 10 more years to catch a day like we had.”

Not everyone is convinced. Noted surf photographer Tim McKenna says the wave Joyeaux caught in April 2003 was “the largest, heaviest wave ever ridden at Teahupoo to this day.”

McKenna, who was present for all three swells, lists Van Bastolaer’s ride last month as No. 2.

Maybe McKenna’s lens has a hint of bias toward his fellow Tahitian residents. “Laird put Teahupoo on the map,” McKenna says, “but the Tahitians have claimed back the beast these last few years.”

To e-mail Pete Thomas or read his previous Fair Game columns, go to latimes.com/petethomas.