Sports Illustrated will announce its choice for Sportsman of the Year on Dec. 6. Here’s one of the nominations for that honor by an SI writer.

Forgive the pro surfing officials who on Nov. 2 prematurely crowned Kelly Slater the winner of the 2011 ASP World Title.

After all, it’s not as though there was any doubt that Slater would, as usual, emerge as champion. So while it turned out he had not mathematically clinched the title on that Wednesday afternoon, a couple of days later in the surf at Somewhere in San Francisco, Slater won a heat — with another gorgeous and nuanced ride in a lifetime of gorgeous and nuanced rides — and that sealed things. Slater had won the title handily with an event to spare.

This is what Kelly Slater did over the first 10 stops of the 11-stop ASP tour: He won the season-opening contest in Australia in March. He won at Teahupoo in August. He won at Trestles in September. At two events Slater finished as the runner-up. Three other times he took home a fifth-place purse.

“To me, it’s amazing,” surfer Owen Wright told reporters after watching Slater surf the swell at Somewhere.

Read more: sportsillustrated

Original post and larger image at greensurfshop.com

Garrett McNamara wasn’t planning to surf on 1 November. “I just didn’t really feel it,” he says. He agreed, however, that he would tow his British friend and fellow big wave surfer, Andrew Cotton, on his jetski.

What happened during that session has already entered surfing lore. Persuaded to take a wave, McNamara, 44, found himself on a freak mountain of water 90ft (30m) high, surfing one of the biggest waves ever ridden, probably the largest in Europe and the biggest recorded on film.

The video and photographs of Mc-Namara’s ride have been viewed by hundreds of thousands on the internet. They depict a tiny figure dropping down against a huge blue, hurtling backdrop.

It is all the more extraordinary because of the hazardous nature of the break, an hour north of Lisbon, where some of the world’s biggest waves collapse almost on the shoreline.

read more at guardian.co.uk