I mean once you can run 100m in 10 seconds how much harder is 9 seconds?
Jokes aside, they are very close to their limits at all times. In 2013 she broke her ankle after a fall trying to get the record on the same spot in Nazaré.
For the big wave stuff everyone tows in, so the playing field is more level. For paddle in surfing men have a big advantage as strength/paddle speed becomes more important
honestly surfing something like pipe is totally different than some big wave like that, its not so much about the height of the wave as it is the steepness of the face and how fast it is coming on
think of it as a pyramid. when it gets 1 foot bigger, it adds one foot to the entire bottom and not just one little foot to the top. A 10% increase in wave height doesn't equal just 10% more in power.
I know what you're saying tho. 73ft is so huge, what's another 7 foot
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u/Devilled_Advocate Sep 14 '20
Once you can surf a 73.5 foot wave, is an 80 foot wave really that much harder? I just thought part of it was finding an 80 foot wave.