O’Neill rider Eli Olsen contemplates the sources of motivation behind his life-long passion for wave riding and how the young Hawaiian has got to where he is today despite never being hailed as the ‘next big thing’. Subscribing to the Brazilian martial art jiu-jitsu as a great way of building his physical fitness (like Joel Tudor, Kelly Slater and many others before him) to handle the North Shores heavy surf, he puts most of his success down to two things: plain old-fashioned hard work and an unwavering determination to make a living from surfing.