How Ben Larg took Scottish surfing to bold new heights at Nazaré

On 17 February, 20-year-old Scottish surfer Ben Larg received a life-changing phone call. On the other end of the line was Hawaiian big wave legend Garrett McNamara, star of the HBO documentary 100 Foot Wave. McNamara had decided not to compete in the Nazaré Big Wave Challenge in Portugal the following day – an invitation-only event that pits the best big wave riders in the world against each other in super-sized surf. Would Ben like to take his place?

Designed to showcase tow-in surfing, in which surfers are slingshotted into waves on ropes attached to the back of jet skis, the Nazaré contest brings together a select group of big wave specialists and divides them into pairs, with the members of each team taking it in turns to surf and drive the ski. In order to ensure optimal conditions, this year’s event had a five-month waiting period, running from 1 November 2024 to 31 March 2025. When Larg took McNamara’s call, the surf forecasting service Surfline was predicting 25-40ft surf for the following day. Serious conditions. Larg didn’t hesitate.

“I think maybe Garrett decided it was time to pass the baton,” he says of their conversation. “He was like, ‘yeah, you go for it kid’.”

Ben Larg of Scotland competes at the Nazaré Big Wave Challenge on 18 February | Damien Poullenot/World Surf League

Given the last-minute nature of Larg’s entry into the event and his lack of competitive experience (this was to be his first appearance in a big wave contest) it would have been easy to write him off as a makeweight – a little-known big wave charger who might perhaps snag a passable wave or two and raise a few curious eyebrows with his unusual country of origin. However, if the Tiree native was a relative unknown on the evening of 17 February, by the evening of the 18th he was well and truly on the surfing world’s radar. Not only did he and his tow-in partner Andrew Cotton of Devon finish third in the team competition, Larg also placed third in the men’s individual standings, ahead of some of the most famous names in the sport, including Kai Lenny of Hawaii and Nic von Rupp of Portugal.

One of the commentators on the live stream of the event on Red Bull TV was Carlos Burle of Brazil – a true giant of the big wave surfing world, now retired. At one point, watching Larg convert almost all of his forward momentum into a full-blooded mid-face hack, at a moment when even seasoned big wave riders might have opted for something a little more conservative, he exclaimed: “Beautiful! He’s approaching a 30ft wave like it's a two-foot wave!”

Ben Larg, throwing himself into a characteristically high-risk manoeuvre at the Nazaré Big Wave Challenge on 18 February | Damien Poullenot/World Surf League

That just about summed up Larg’s no-guts-no-glory attitude. The teams each had two 40-minute heats in which to impress the judges, with their best two scores counting towards an overall total, and Larg surfed every wave he caught as if it might have been his last.

To those who have been following Larg’s career closely, his remarkable Nazaré result might not seem quite so remarkable. This, after all, is the lad who rode a 30ft monster at Mullaghmore in Ireland at the age of just 14, was tackling even bigger waves at Nazaré aged 16 and picked up a Red Bull sponsorship deal thanks to his big wave exploits at the age of 17. He and Cotton had been training together in Nazaré for much of the winter by the time McNamara’s phone call came in, so if there was ever going to be a moment for him to show the world what he could do, this was undoubtedly it.

Tow-in partners Andrew Cotton and Ben Larg finished third in the team event at Nazaré | Oscar James

Still, Larg is taking nothing for granted – when I speak to him on the phone a couple of hours after the Nazaré contest he says he’s “super-delighted” and very modestly describes his third place finish as “a good result”.

Unlike most of the competitors in the event, who aimed to ride lefts (waves breaking from surfer’s right to left) towards the beach of Praia do Norte, Larg and Cotton decided to focus on the rights breaking towards the cliffs beneath Nazaré’s iconic lighthouse. It was a high-risk strategy, requiring a couple of heart-in-mouth jet ski rescues, but one that paid off.

“Obviously the right goes into the rocks, so it’s a bit dodgy,” Larg explains, understating the case somewhat, “but the rescues were good and we never lost boards or anything.” A surfboard, if hurled against those cliffs by a 30ft wall of whitewater, wouldn’t be so much lost as pulped.

For all that Larg and Cotton were mostly concentrating on going right, Larg’s highest-score actually came from a left. On perhaps the largest wave he’d caught all day, he initially made as if to head towards the cliffs but then swung around and went rocketing off in the opposite direction. A long, committed bottom turn just ahead of an avalanche of whitewater projected him high up onto the wave’s face, at which point a weight shift from his heels to his toes allowed him to draw a beautiful, arcing carve. Another high-speed turn off the bottom of the wave sent him soaring up towards its crest once more, but this time, with the lip beginning to pitch in front of him, he took the only exit route available, launching himself high into the air and landing well clear of the ensuing explosion. As Chris Coté, another of the commentators on the live stream, said of Larg: “He’s already proven himself, but he’s still got a lot more to give.” Who can say where he’ll go from here?

To watch the 2024/25 Nazaré Big Wave Challenge, visit www.redbull.com

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