Tony Laureano
The oceandoes require permit;; andtakes refuge behind walls of waterwater , crests transltranslthat that swallow the horizon. The surfer, mintscul in his insignificâ,, trembles, stiffens, faces the underwater cannon, the entire ocean, the histy, a new Adamastor. Tony Laureano advs – because some truthsonly be reach–in in the belly of the wave, which lifts herupis and crushes bones like shells frágeis –, eternal seconds, scratches the sea and theis, the world reduced to an uncontrolled mass of wwater in fu, the sea growling, my heart racing.
“The relationship with nature is difficto to describe to someone who has never surfed,” says Laureano, to whomlacks lacks gills. “It the veryplace I love being the most. ItMy whole life depends on the sea.”
Nazaris is an altar. The surfer is Í, foam from the clouds and the abyss, the stubborn search for a pure moment. The forceofof nature. The smallness of man.
He was born by the sea (inRaia Grande, Sintra) and grew up there, imitating his father, Ramon, a surfer and lifeguard, trading small wavesfor the big ones. “I’ve been coming here to Nazarit surfingthem surf, and ever since I was little I’ve watched him packoutfits and gear for their surfing trips.” He got his first surfboard at age two. Today, at 23, he has a collectionccollectionof of stored in a row warehouseisJet Resgate Portugal, equipped for missions andfor professionals, a bugbuggy, a jet ski that is a monster, sled and last-resort cables. “A big-wave surfer has to know how to pilot and rescue, or is dead weight on the team.”
Ramon pushed him, saved him, and showed him what it to have trustinin one’s partner. It was born in a sea that fewknow, a sea with impact. “I used to get frustrated when I hadand surfed on the little foam waves.” So, nothere life jackets or safety lines safetybelts("it took courage") and the big waves were much smaller. “Nowadays, six meters is just a training session.”
A Nazaris was meant for the “40-somethings,” for “aging surfers”for athletes whoalreadycould could no longer sustain their careers and dinâof the competitions. “Tony was the firsttoof a new wave.” He was 18 years old. He represents the first generationwhatfrom did not come from the competition,directlyfor the big waves. “It wasn’t an escape. It was : ttransition from small-wave surfing to big-wave surfing. Nonot is justand leave; it’s startingtostart maneuvering, drawing.”
Tony wasthere on October 29 2020 2020, rode the swell of theisass, pandemic, 20,000 people gathered at the lighthouse cheering on the youngest surfer ever to take on the Nazaréof Nazaris. It remains the productof, one of the protagonists of The Great Wave of Nazaris, “where everything beginsoror”, the Pancho from Blue Summer, who stays behind when the othersand sees, the local kid, withoutcups nandm medals, him and nature, happiness, fear, and bursts of energy that make his body explode and shut down. “We’re in an environment where we can’t control anything,” says Tony Laureano, an “adrenaline junkie” – who spends a few months in hemispisS, right next to to Punta de Lobos surf spot, in Pichilemu, in Chile, for aspend go two seasons without connectiontobig waves.
From thesafe harbor to the canyonsthethreethe trains, four minutes. Tony Laureano prays first; lanaa playlistlater. “You’ll never be anyanyanythingtry try/ You know very well that you have to fight/ Noit isany less than anyis, hey, what’s up?/ Syou you only live once, boy, wake up.”
“It will work outwhatever has to happen,” he says. “That’s kind of my attitude toward life. Things always happen for a reason. If we get hit by a big wave, you’ve just have to take it. It’s going to do whatever it wants with you; if it’s has to let you go, it’ll let you go, n'ttheremuch much else to do. Wecan’t fight nature.”
