And especially interesting is how the editors embedded the video at the website. This story was on the front page in traditional dead-tree format, but online the newspaper basically blogged it.
At Los Angeles Times, "A surfer's defining moment in a wall of water":
The view from inside a wave, a big one, can be hazy.
Surrounded by spray and a pounding drone, surfers get tunnel vision, all senses devoted to reaching the far end of the barrel. As Clark said: "You're so focused on harnessing and managing that power so you can deal with it, ride it, survive it."
When Fletcher was towed into his second ride at Teahupoo — by a faster Jet ski this time — it was clear he had landed in the jaws of a behemoth.
The wave reached an estimated 37 feet, but it wasn't so much the height as the thickness and ferocious power, a churning locomotive. After a bottom turn, he spotted a narrow slot, a path to safety, but his board kept twisting sideways.
"I was battling the whole time," he said. "Just thinking that I had to make it because I was scared."
The sheer volume of water running up the face of the wave threatened to suck him up and over. Yet, until the last moment, Fletcher thought he had a chance to emerge unscathed.
"Then I realized I wasn't going to make it."
The lip overhead — nearly as heavy as the wave itself, a frightening trademark of Teahupoo — collapsed with merciless force, sending his board flying, wrenching his body underwater. "This is it," he thought. "I've had some good waves, a good life." Then, just as quickly, he popped to the surface.
"I grabbed my head," he recalled. "I was like, is that thing still on there?"
Back on shore, the crowd was buzzing about his epic ride and wipeout, but the whole thing felt so surreal that he didn't pay much attention. Wasn't everyone catching big ones that day?
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