Laird Hamilton
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Laird Hamilton (born Laird John Zerfas on March 2, 1964 in San Francisco) is an American big-wave surfer and former male model.
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[edit] Background
Laird was born in San Francisco on March 2, 1964, in an experimental bathysphere designed to ease the mother's labor.[1] Laird and his mother, Joann Zyirek Zerfas, moved to Hawaii when he was still an infant, after the departure of his Greek birth father, L.G. Zerfas, before his first birthday. Even as a child Laird showed an unquenchable thirst for adrenaline; footage has been released of him jumping off a sixty foot cliff into deep water at just 7 years old. While a young boy, Laird met legendary 1960s surfer Bill Hamilton on Pupukea beach of the North Shore of Oahu; and introduced Hamilton to his mother. Bill Hamilton went on to marry Joann, and become Laird's adopted father, eventually moving the family to a remote valley on the island of Kauai. JoAnn and Bill had a son, giving Laird a younger half-brother (and surfer), Lyon. JoAnn died of a brain aneurysm in 1997. Hamilton thus grew up in the 1960s and 1980s in what is known as one of the greatest surfing locations in the world, the north coast of Oahu as a playground with a legendary surfer as a father and coach to mold him into the art of conquering big wave surf.
[edit] Modeling
At the age of sixteen, Hamilton left the eleventh grade at Kapaa High School to pursue a modeling career and work in construction. At seventeen, Hamilton was discovered on a beach in Kauai by a photographer from the Italian Men's Vogue magazine L'Uomo Vogue which subsequently saw him land a modeling contract and later a 1983 photo shoot with the actress Brooke Shields
[edit] Surfing career
[edit] 1980s
By the age of twenty, Hamilton had already become an accomplished surfer and could have easily left modelling to pursue a different career on surfing's World Championship Tour. However, competitive surfing and contests never appealed to Hamilton, who had watched his father Bill suffer thoroughly in organized championships. Bill Hamilton regarded surfing more as a work of art rather than based chiefly on performance. As a young Hamilton once said, "Contests are less about the one big wave than about your performances. Surfing is about your body of work. It's about art. I would snap if I was letting someone other than the audience determine my fate. How does a musician judge his thing? By how many people love his music?"
In the 1987 movie North Shore, Hamilton played the antagonistic role of "Lance Burkhart."
Despite further success in modeling during the 1980s, Hamilton, with his professional surfing upbringing, had always intended to venture into a life of surfing. But Hamilton's rejection and disposition toward the contest circuit meant that he had to devise an alternate route to fame and international recognition.
[edit] 1990s
An early attempt at media recognition was his quest to be the first surfer to complete a 360 loop while strapped to his board. The attempt was chronicled in the ski film Groove - Requiem in the key of Ski by Greg Stump (1990). In the early 1990s with Maui's legendary 'Strapped' crew, a group of eight or so friends that included fellow all-star Rush Randle, which aimed to push the restrictions and boundaries of contemporary surfing. The Strapped crew amazed spectators by tackling bigger wave surf and featuring stunts. Stunts included: launching 30-foot (9.1 m) jumps on sailboards, then mating the boards to paragliders to experiment with some of the earliest kiteboards. The video "Strapped" chronicles their feats.
In late 1992, Hamilton with some of his companions, such as Darrick Doerner and Buzzy Kerbox, started using inflatable boats to tow one another into waves which were too big to catch under paddle power alone. The technique, which would later be modified to use jet skis, was a revolutionary innovation. Tow-in surfing, as it soon became known, pushed the confinements and possibilities of big wave surfing to a whole new level. Although met with mixed reactions from the surfing community, some of whom felt that it was cheating and polluting, Hamilton explained that tow-in surfing was the only way to catch the monstrous sized waves such as those that can be seen at Jaws (Peahi) off the coast of Maui and the coastline of Tahiti. Using tow-in surfing methods, Hamilton quickly learned how to survive 70-foot (21 m) waves and carving arcs across walls of water that could literally sink ships.
In 1994 he appeared on both ESPN and the cover of the magazine which gained him attention from a number of sporting agencies who recognized his potential, landing an exclusive sponsorship from the French beachwear company 'Oxbow' surf.
However, in 1995, Hamilton's life took an unexpected detour. Hamilton met professional volleyball player and model Gabrielle Reece in Los Angeles, California after a television interview. He went on to marry Reece in November 1997.
In 1996, People magazine named him one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World, and he replaced Reece as correspondent for the syndicated cable series 'The Extremists'.
By the late 1990 Hamilton was continuing his love affair with the water by windsurfing, waterskiing and developing his kitesurfing abilities as a pioneer of the sport. In 1996 Hamilton and Manu Bertin were instrumental in demonstrating and popularizing kitesurfing off the Hawaiian coast of Maui.
In 1999 Hamilton sailed his windsurfer between the Hawaiian islands of Oahu and Kauai, some fifty miles away, in just under six hours. He later sailed his windsurfer back again. Hamilton has also been credited with inventing the foilboard. The foilboard is an innovative surfboard which incorporates hydrofoil technology allowing a higher degree of precision and effectiveness of aerial techniques within the water. Most recently, he has become the most public practitioner and proponent of stand-up paddle surfing, an ancient Hawaiian technique that requires an enormous longboard and a long-handled paddle, as well as considerable skill, strength and agility. Some "purist" surfers have blasted him for this, but Hamilton has called it a return to an old, traditional Hawaiian way of surfing, some say practiced by King Kamehameha and his queen Ka'ahumanu almost three hundred years ago.
[edit] 2000-present
However, it was Hamilton's death-defying drop into Tahiti's Teahupo'o break on the morning of August 17, 2000 which became the benchmark in his career and his life, and cemented his reputation as the greatest big wave surfer of all time. A wipeout in Teahupo'o, a particularly hazardous shallow-water reefbreak in southeast Tahiti, means almost certain death. At Teahupo'o, Hamilton dropped into what is widely considered to be the most dangerous wave ever ridden. His ride there is known by surfers worldwide simply as 'The Wave', and a shot of him riding The Wave made the cover of Surfer magazine, accompanied by the caption: "oh my god...". Afterwards even Hamilton admitted that even he was pushing himself to the "max, max, max, max". Hamilton is now widely regarded as the best of the best at big wave surfing, regularly surfing swells of 35 feet (11 m) tall, and moving at speeds in excess of 30 miles (48 km) an hour and successfully riding other waves of up to 70 feet (21 m) high, at up to 50 mph (80 km/h).
He has often been credited for being able to conquer such enormous 'big wave' surf because of his exceptional physical conditioning and stature. At 6'3" (1.90m) and 220 pounds (102kg) he is able to take on larger waves which many smaller surfers could not physically handle.
In February 2008 Laird joined the board of directors of H2O Audio, a watersports music company in San Diego California. Laird will help H2O Audio guide its brand and develop its next generation of waterproof MP3 cases and waterproof headphones. He had used H2O Audio products on many of his long distance paddling endeavors before joining the company.
[edit] Personal life
He was previously married to Maria. They had a daughter, Izabella, in 1995.
On November 30, 1997, Hamilton married model and pro volleyball athlete Gabrielle Reece. They have two children together, daughters Reece Viola Hamilton (born in October 2003), and Brody Jo Hamilton (born January 1, 2008 in Hawaii), weighing 8lbs 2ozs.
[edit] Selected TV/film appearances
Hamilton appeared in the 2004 documentary Riding Giants about surfing and the opening sequence of the 2002 James Bond movie Die Another Day, as Pierce Brosnan's big-wave surfing double. He also appears in Waterworld, as Kevin Costner's stunt double in numerous water scenes. During the making of "Waterworld", Hamilton, who had been commuting to the set via jet-ski, was lost at sea when his jet-ski ran out of fuel between Maui and the Big Island. He drifted for many hours before being spotted by a Coast Guard plane and rescued; when the abandoned jet-ski washed up on shore on the island of Lanai, he went over to fetch it and drove it back home again.
In October 2006, Hamilton and another legendary waterman, Dave Kalama, biked and paddled the entire Hawaiian Island chain—more than 450 miles—in a week. The feat was featured on Don King's film A Beautiful Son in support of those afflicted with autism. [2]
In 2007, Hamilton, along with his wife Gabrielle Reece, appeared in the ABC reality television series Fast Cars and Superstars: The Gillette Young Guns Celebrity Race, featuring a dozen celebrities in a stock car racing competition. In the first round of competition, Hamilton matched up against tennis star Serena Williams and former NFL quarterback John Elway. Hamilton was eliminated in episode 5.
He has appeared in the television show Iconoclasts with Eddie Vedder from the popular American rock band Pearl Jam
Footage of Hamilton is used on the video for "Dayvan Cowboy" from Boards of Canada.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Turner, Miki (2004-07-09). 10 Burning Questions: Laird Hamilton. Page 3. ESPN.com. Retrieved on 2008-01-11.
- ^ "Hamilton and Kalama Lend a Hand" Maui No Ka 'Oi Magazine Vol.11 No.1 (Jan. 2007).
[edit] References
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008) |
- Duane, Daniel (July, 2004), “Last Man Standing”, Men's Journal, <http://www.mensjournal.com/feature/0407/lairdHamilton.html>.
- Jenkins, Bruce (Fall, 1997), “Laird Hamilton: 20th Century Man”, The Surfer's Journal 6 (3), <http://www.surfersjournal.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TSJ&Product_Code=BI06-3&Category_Code=>.
- Stahl, Lesley (2004-07-24), Surf's Up!, CBS News, <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/26/60minutes/main602558.shtml>. Retrieved on 11 January 2008.
- Thomson, Candus (2004-11-30), After shooting curls, he's chilling, The Baltimore Sun, <http://www.olympic-usa.org/11699_28334.htm>. Retrieved on 11 January 2008.
- Warshaw, Matt (2003), Maverick's: The Story of Big-Wave Surfing, Chronicle Books, ISBN 0811841596.
[edit] External links
- Laird Hamilton's Web Site
- http://www.juicemagazine.com/lairdhamilton.html
- http://www.tvguide.com/celebrities/laird-hamilton/bio/161151
- Laird Hamilton at the Internet Movie Database
- The famous Surfer magazine cover of Laird Hamilton riding The Wave at Teahupoo, 17 August 2000
- Another set of photographs of Laird Hamilton riding The Wave at Teahupoo, 17 August 2000, by Tim McKenna
- Laird Hamilton profiled on clubofthewaves.com
- Surfer magazine interview
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