Photo: Noyle/A-Frame

The pioneer of heavy-wave switch foot tube riding, of mid-wave board swaps at ten-foot Pipe, of soft boards at ten-foot Pipe, one of the youngest to win the Pipe Masters and basically the best guy in waves of tubular consequence in history. From the wave in his front yard, Pipeline, to giant Chopes, giant Puerto Escondido, mindless Desert Point, giant Nias and pretty much any other heavy barrelling wave you care to name, Jamie o’Brien has gotten deeper than anyone and done it with a superhuman calm that is nothing short of confounding. “As I’m paddling out, I’m envisioning what I’m going to do – positive thinking, visualizing it. It’s weird, because it works. you can think about things, and then they’ll happen… not all the time. But sometimes it happens,” he said recently of his secret weapon.

The son of an Australian surfer who moved to the North Shore to become a lifeguard, JoB’s youth was spent at Pipe. But it wasn’t necessarily a smooth progression. Jamie’s coming of age in Hawaii happened to coincide with an era in surfing that was still ruled by the fearsome Polynesian pros Marvin Foster, Johnny Boy Gomes and Dane Kealoha among others. Pipeline might have been in his front yard but as a kid he was suckered into waves that might have killed him.

“They accepted me after a while, but there were times where the guys didn’t want me to get a good one because they knew I could make it if it came to me, and there were also times when they would yell “Go, go, go!”, and it was just a big closeout and I would get so pounded,” he recalls.

It explains a lot. If there is one thing JoB will be remembered for it is his sheer audacity in the face of life threatening waves. That’s not to say he hasn’t taken his share of vicious beatings. The toll of charging this hard has been exacting and there has been injuries, but over the years he’s not only grown accustomed to getting smashed, but actually enjoys it. “I actually don’t mind getting pounded. In fact, when I’m gone, I miss it. It’s kind of weird, because if you grow up at a place, especially like Pipeline—you know how many barrels you’re going to get. It’s kind of weird to say, but I get so many barrels that I get bored. I just want to keep trying new things and keep people interested. No one else is doing it—guys like Kelly and those guys are pretty good too, but they don’t go out there on a normal session and switch stance or anything,” he said.

He’s been labelled arrogant and disrespectful for statements like this but surely there has to be a trade off between having this kind of confidence in the face of death and a fierce alpha male bravado. There is something of the bullfighter in JoB and that surely brings with it a certain mental state. He’s got all the progressive stylings too but it is his unrivalled mastery of surfing’s greatest thrill that gets him in the list. – JS