Michel Bourez, tuning up at Teahupoo, Tahiti

With Michel Bourez midway through his best year ever on tour (two wins!) and the ASP about to set up shop in the channel of Teahupoo (Michel’s Tahitian), we thought it fitting to pull this moment from print… From Stab issue 74: The last time Michel Bourez yelled, broke a board and surfed Teahupoo was during this very swell, this wave. And you want a secret for surfing this roundish and generally disconcerting wave? “Never jump off,” he says. “Even when you’re deep, too deep, stay on your board. Just by the fact of not jumping you keep on going forward and your line is straight. Have faith and that puts you in the zone. And sometimes you make it. A lot of the time you don’t. But when you make one of those impossible rides, it’s something you’ll always remember.”