Swell season has just begun at Nazaré, the famed break off the coast of Portugal that serves up legendary waves, and it looks like a record has already been broken. According to Surfline, 28-year-old French surfer Justine Dupont rode a massive wave, estimated to be 70 feet tall, last week. Although it hasn’t been certified by the World Surf League, that’s tall enough to set a new women’s big wave surf record, beating Maya Gabeira’s record of 68 feet set in 2018.
“So much emotions and things learned during that last swell,” Dupont wrote on Instagram after her epic ride. Luckily, it was caught on video—check out the video at this link here.
Pedro Miranda, who shot the video and also witnessed Gabeira’s record breaking 2018 wave, was really impressed with Dupont’s ride.
“This was for sure the bomb of the day, and one of the most impressive and critical rides I’ve ever watched in Nazaré,” he told Newsflare. “Justine was riding backside which makes it even more difficult and her ride was flawless, she rode the wave as deep and technical as it gets.”
For comparison, here’s a video of Gabeira’s 2018 ride:
Nazaré is hotbed for surfing records. Gabeira set her record there, and last year Rodrigo Koxa set the record for the largest wave ever surfed when he rode a massive 80-foot swell at the break. That bested the previous record of 78 feet, which was also set at Nazaré in 2011.
We’ll have to wait until the WSL Big Wave Awards in May 2020 to find out if Dupont has officially broken the record, Surfline reports. But who knows? With a few months left in the swell season at Nazaré, there may be more records to come.
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