Beyond the Break by Christo Hall

Author:Christo Hall [Hall, Christo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781394280858
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2024-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

Stay focused — always

When surfing big waves, you're alert for danger, and that includes looking out for other surfers and making sure they surface after a bad wipe-out. But when it comes to training sessions, there's often not the same attention to the risks. No matter your reason for being in the water, a situation can turn dangerous in an instant, and Jay's loss was a lesson for me to be vigilant in my respect for the ocean. The ocean is the boss and she must be respected, even in the most beautiful of times.

News stories and outpourings of grief reverberated around the world after Jay's death. It was a real tragedy that he was taken by a freak accident in calm water, and no doubt each and every surfer on the water was facing their own mortality over the following days, just as I was.

Sure, I'd contemplated having a serious accident while surfing huge waves or over shallow reefs, but it wasn't something I allowed to fester in my mind. There wasn't room in those adrenaline-fuelled situations for negativity. The very reason I worked so hard to keep Bronco at bay was to avoid slipping into a state of paralysing fear when faced with extreme situations.

Many extreme athletes have died doing what they love (and what others view as crazy), but it's always so much more shocking when their final moments come during downtime or training. We're accustomed to seeing them defy death time and time again in the face of imminent danger, and forget how easy it is to let your guard down in commonplace situations, where there isn't an obvious risk. When competing, most professionals will have routines to check all their equipment, get their body and mind into a peak state and be 100 per cent focused. Often during practice we might not follow the routine.

I often thought about the fragility of life after Jay passed away, but I couldn't let it stop me from living mine.

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