Laird Hamilton

Laird Hamilton is a big-wave surfer, co-inventor of tow-in-surfing, and an occasional fashion and action-sports model. At the age of 16, Hamilton left high school to pursue a modeling career and to work in construction. The following year, a photographer from Italian Men’s Vogue Magazine discovered him on a beach. That same year, Hamilton had become an accomplished surfer and was able to leave modeling to pursue a career on surfing’s World Championship tour, but he was never drawn to competitive surfing. In 1992, Hamilton and two of his friends started using inflatable boats to tow one another into waves, which were too big to catch under paddle power alone. This technique later became modified to use personal watercraft and became a popular innovation known as Tow-in surfing. Hamilton had many mixed reactions to tow-in surfing because many critics felt it was cheating. On August 17, 2000, Hamilton’s drop into Tahiti’s Teahupo’o break established him in the recorded history of surfing.