Former Love Island star ‘rides into the record books’ surfing enormous wave in Portugal

A British surfer from Devon may have entered the record books after surfing the biggest wave a woman has ever attempted.

Laura Crane, 30, rode the massive wall of water while competing in the Nazaré Big Wave Challenge in Portugal on Saturday.

Guinness World Records is currently evaluating his latest efforts.

Brazil’s Maya Gabeira holds the women’s record with a 22.4-metre wave in Nazaré in February 2020, but Ms Crane is confident hers was longer.

Ms Crane told the Times the jet ski driver warned her it would ‘bomb’ as he launched her into the wave traveling at about 30 mph.

He described the experience as ‘flying’.

“It’s completely crazy, it’s an out-of-body experience that I can’t put into words,” he told The Times as he prepared to embark on another ascent this week.

‘You’re moving so fast and you don’t have a lot of control over what’s going to happen and you just have to trust yourself, your training, your body and mind and trust the ocean that everything will be okay.

‘When I look over my shoulder and see this thing, the first thing you feel is fear, which is the body’s response to danger, and the next step is to really control that and make sure you’re present in the moment and trusting that you can do it.’

The small fishing village of Nazaré, north of Lisbon, turns into a surfers’ paradise during the winter months, when the three-mile-deep underwater canyon can create waves up to a building ten stories high.

Previously, the doyen of this sport, Marcio Freire, disappeared and died while trying to try one of the giant waves in 2023.

Many people were also seriously injured.

Miss Crane became the first British woman to ride giant waves last year.

She broke her ankle surfing the giant Nazaré wave during training earlier this year and has continued to push for a return to competition this winter.

He said his angle is similar to Gabeira’s, so the comparison shouldn’t be too difficult.

The verification process can take months or even years as experts try to calculate the size of the wave.

Laura Crane, 30, rode the giant wall of water while competing in the Nazaré Big Wave Competition in Portugal on Saturday.

When Laura Crane competed on Love Island during a break from surfing in 2018

After emerging from the wave in one piece, she burst into tears when she was picked up by support crew on a jet ski.

‘It was these incredible tears of happiness and joy and I had this incredible experience with this wave that I’ve seen a million times in my dreams,’ he said.

‘It’s always very relaxing. When you look over your shoulder at the most critical point, you try not to be afraid of what is rising behind you as it breaks above your head. You will experience a great moment of relief when your driver comes to pick you up.

‘As soon as we got out of the water the photographer said: ‘I don’t think you understand how big this wave is.’

While he was competing at the time, the event was suspended due to a technical fault.

Despite people’s confusion about whether they could continue surfing, he and fellow Englishman Andrew Cotton went out and continued competing.

‘Most of the surfers recovered but I couldn’t,’ he said. ‘I only had a few hours of light left and the tide was dying. “It was a race against time.”

Miss Devon fell in love with surfing after moving to Devon at the age of eight, but all was not well until she got to this point.

Surfer Laura Crane for a year until Tokyo 2020 event

She had to overcome sexism, an eating disorder, and sepsis, while regaining her confidence to face the waves.

By the age of 12, he had won multiple surfing championships and traveled the world with some of surfing’s biggest sponsors.

But as time goes on, she said the surfing world will treat women more like models than athletes.

An example of this was when she was 15 and encouraged to post pictures in a bikini or next to her surfboard, but she never actually surfed. By age 16, she also developed an eating disorder, which she said is not uncommon for female surfers.

After taking a break from all the different pressures, she appeared on Love Island but wasn’t prepared for the backlash that came with it, including looking different from the other girls.

When he moved to London in 2018, he was hospitalized with sepsis. Ms. Crane thought it was her body’s way of rejecting a fast-paced lifestyle, and she was too close to the beach again.

Nazaré’s training involved months of both physical and mental preparation, including training him to remain calm when he felt stressed.

‘I believe I’ve been training for this my whole life,’ he said. ‘Big wave surfing is really interesting and your life experiences play a part in your mental strength.

‘Some of the things I went through I wouldn’t want to go through again, but it gave me a thick skin and the belief to keep fighting and keep this path open for someone else after me. This will last a lifetime and I’ll still keep going.’

He said the thought of breaking the world record was ‘very exciting for British surfing’.