Damien Hobgood
Damien Hobgood
In the April of 2008, a wave-starved Damien Hobgood saw a swell on the charts and followed it all the way to the Teahupoo line-up, in search of tubes. A combination of injuries, world tour obligations and bad luck with waves meant he hadn’t pulled into any solid ones for months, and was accordingly frothing. As Globe’s Brian Robbins put it, “he was an overcharged Hobgood”.
Anyone familiar with the Hobgood twins will have a good idea of what an “overcharged Hobgood” might look like. After surfing all day he turned to paddle for a bomb, hesitated as he noticed Brian Conley paddling on his inside, then resumed his efforts as he saw Conley pull out — but too late. “I knew I was going over,” he remembers. “I got pushed straight onto the reef. I knew I had hit hard and hit my head. I was trying to stay conscious and not fight it but also not blackout.”
“He’s lucky to be alive,” said Chris O’Callahan, who picked the dazed Damo up on his ski and raced him to the hospital. A broken left scapula (shoulder blade) in three places, a gash to the head and a cut-up back were added to his already lengthy medical records, and Damo caught the first flight home to catch up with his specialist. That same shoulder had in fact been operated on twice already, due to ligament damage sustained from stalling in giant barrels (a bad idea).
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