The Lifeguard Who Won Surfing’s Biggest Prize—On His Lunch Break
Luke Shepardson won The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational last weekend, beating out the biggest names in the sport
When he was hoisted onto the shoulders of surfing legends, cemented into history with a near-perfect score at the sport’s most prestigious event, there was only one thing that made Luke Shepardson look out of place. Most everyone else was covered—from their rash guards to their boards—with logos. Quiksilver. Rip Curl. Clif Bar. They were surfers, after all, and they had to pay the bills somehow.
But Shepardson, the 27-year-old local now on top of the surfing world, was a blank canvas—no sponsors anywhere. He had a different day job, rarely competed in surfing tournaments, and his clothing signaled to the world that he had chosen a different path. His yellow shirt and red boardshorts could only mean one thing: Shepardson was a North Shore lifeguard. He’d just taken on the world’s most famous surfers and, out of nowhere, he had beaten them all.
“I gotta get back to the tower to make sure everybody is okay until the end of the day,” Shepardson said.
Golf has the Masters, held every April. Tennis has Wimbledon, held every July. Baseball has the World Series, held late ever Fall. Sports exist on a calendar, pulled together by routine starts and stops, and we keep time by these marquee events. We know summer is over when the NFL kicks off every year.
But The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational, best known simply as “The Eddie,” isn’t like any other event on the sports calendar. It doesn’t begin at any specific time of year; often it isn’t held at all. Hosted at Waimea Bay on the North Shore of Oahu, the tournament is only on when swells reach 30 feet. If those Goldilocks conditions are forecast—and until last weekend, they hadn’t been for seven years—the surfing world springs into action. Competitors fly in from as far as South Africa and New Zealand. Broadcasters install cameras on the beach. Boards get waxed.
And Luke Shepardson asked for a little time off from work. He grew up dreaming of surfing this tournament, and as a kid splashing in the Hawaiian water, his parents would have to drag him out after the sun had set; if Shepardson had his way, he would have stayed all night. When Shepardson grew up, he wanted to stay close to that water and help others, finding inspiration from one of his heroes, Eddie Aikau, the tournament’s namesake. Aikau was the North Shore’s first lifeguard, a native Hawaiian who saved nearly 500 people in his lifetime. Shepardson decided to become a lifeguard too.
Shepardson’s boss told him that he could surf in The Eddie during his lunch breaks. So during each of the three heats, Shepardson would run down the beach and rejoin the tournament. “When I grabbed my jersey for the first heat, I started tearing up and crying,” he said. “I was like, ‘I am really surfing an Eddie Aikau contest.’ It’s been one of the hugest dreams of mine.”
But in the water, Shepardson calmed down—at least, it appeared that way.
In the first round, Shepardson’s ride scored a perfect 30. He notched another perfect score in round two. And in the final round, he earned a 29.1. His total of 89.1 was good enough to edge reigning champion John John Florence.
Watching Shepardson, I couldn’t help but think of Kelly Slater, the surfing legend who won The Eddie in 2002, and what he had to say about sports in an episode of our series Greatness Code. “When the greatest moments of your life happen,” Slater said, “they don’t necessarily happen by chance. It’s really an accumulation of all your understanding and knowledge of that thing coming together in that moment. In those times, you don’t have to think about it. You become it.”
“You think about when you were a little child, and the feeling you had when you first did this thing: the first time I did a turn or went through a tube or surfed with my dad or my brother. I just remember this flood of different memories coming through, this whole lifetime building to this crescendo.”
I like to think that Shepardson felt something similar last weekend, shooting down the face of a giant wave, feeling connected to his home state, to Eddie Aikau, to his entire past. There’s something romantic about that image, something irresistible.
But maybe I’m just projecting. After the tournament was over, was Shepardson dwelling on the moment? Not quite. “We went home, made some pizza and ate pizza and went to sleep,” he said.
The next day, he was back on the beach in the lifeguard tower, watching the waves roll.
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