Brendon Gibbens Flew So High He Punctured A Lung

Last year, South Africa’s Brendon Gibbens flew all the way to Waco, Texas to compete in Stab High. 

Then, on the warmup day before the event, Beeg threw an air into the afternoon breeze, landed slightly off-kilter, and hyper-extended the ligaments around his tibiofemoral joint, also known as the knee. Brendon was unable to compete in the event as a result of the injury, which kept him out of the water for many months. 

When he was finally able to surf again, Beeg scoured the South African nation for quality wedges and points, which he found in the faraway regions of Cape Town and Jeffrey’s Bay. You can watch that above.

Then, on one fateful day:

“Beeg was surfing solo at home and fell from the top of a wave into the flats,” Brendon’s filmer, Beren Hall explained. “He had his arm above his head, so the full brunt of the impact was on his torso, and it tore a small hole in one of his lungs. If the tear was any worse, his lungs could have collapsed and he would have been completely fucked.

“The hole is healing by itself, but he can’t fly for six weeks because the air that escaped the lung is in his chest cavity, so he needs to wait for it to be absorbed by the lungs, or else it could collapse. Pretty wild.”

Ergo, he’s had to pull out of Stab High… again.

While we’re saddened by this news, we can’t help but be disappointed that Brendon didn’t opt for a more lung-friendly form of intercontinental travel: sailing from Africa’s Cape of Good Hope across the Atlantic and into the Gulf of Mexico, parking his vessel in Port Houston Harbor and making the three-hour drive to Waco.

The judges would have awarded an extra point or two for style.