Australia's Surfing Life Magazine

Tom Carroll’s Big Break

Tuesday, 08 December 2009 19:00

6:30 AM - pretty much chockas - Pic by Shield. Get some more Waimea visual stimulation.

A 25-foot set comes and Dorian waits very deep and goes the second wave. He gets to the bottom and in his words, "it goes BOOM!" He's blasted into the inside and sits for a while to regain his composure. Later he runs into Reef on a drop and rips out his back fin. Now his 9'6" is a twin-fin. "OK!" he says, "let's have a sideslip contest! People will be going, 'Man, they're doing 360s out there!'"

Tom and Ross try to catch the same wave and almost get sucked over the falls together, and spend a couple of minutes reminiscing over a time a few years ago when exactly that happened. "Funny and frightening at the same time," Ross says.

Tom disappears from the lineup, and after another half hour or so I think it's time for breakfast. What I don't know is that Tom's last wave squared up on him. It was around 15 feet but had a wide bowl that bent around and exploded directly on top of him, pushing him down onto his board. He remembers tumbling through the foam thinking, "Oh shit, this is bad, I hope it's not a compound fracture." It isn't but his foot is hanging off the end of his leg, sagging sideways, a total medial dislocation. Later an X-ray shows an accompanying fracture of the fibula about halfway up the lower leg. Tom reaches down and pushes the foot back into place and paddles like fuck for the shorebreak. He catches a wave onto the sand, but nobody realises he's hurt! Eventually the lifeguards come down and grab him.

Tom, clearly frustrated upon realising he will miss the Eddie. Footage courtesy of Quiksilver.

We end up at the Wahiawa emergency room, where the nurses insist on a photo op, and eventually come past the Bay again around 3pm. George's "maybe" is a maybe no longer; a massive set hits as we drive past, then another, the small pack of surfers not in position or not keen on it.

Tom's inner world of Eddie and the Bay is drawn down, suddenly a blank, unavailable. He's glum, but yet to fully comprehend what's occurred; injuries like this take a while to work entirely through your psyche. "I should make up a flyer," he says, imagining the number of times he's gonna have to explain what happened in the coming days. "Just have a bunch of flyers with me and hand 'em out whenever anyone asks."

The full run-down of Nick and Tom’s day.

Best thing you’ll read this week and no mistake.