Vincent Duvignac Broke His Neck On A Sandbar He Knew By Heart
“Out of Line” documents his injury, recovery, and the possibility of surfing again.
You don’t think much about your own neck. Until it forces you to.
If where you look is where you go, the neck plays a crucial role as a hinge between the head, where the eyes sit, and the rest of the body. That hinge does quite a lot of work: compressing, twisting, extending, and occasionally malfunctioning.
On January 14, 2025, Vincent Duvignac’s neck reminded him of both its existence and its fragility.
It also happened where he didn’t expect it to. The sandbars in Les Landes are ephemeral and fickle. While they can turn on unannounced and bring nothing but hoots, hysteria, and an urgency to suit up, Duvi tends to take caution, observe and study them before taking the rip ride out the back.
His reputation has been built on thousands of waves like these over hundreds of sessions. Until that day, when one folded differently and obliterated his cervical vertebrae.
Out of Line is a 37-minute documentary by Pierre Frechou, charting the slow, repetitive, and unglamorous recovery process, and asking some bigger questions: can he surf again?
Should he?
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