Ken Bradshaw (October 4, 1952-)

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Oahu, January 28, 1998. The swell was huge and every big-name spot on the North Shore was closed out. Waimea Bay was a seething cauldron of foam, and the outside reefs were breaking straight across from Mokuleia to Kahuku and beyond. In the midst of the maelstrom, a 45-year-old Texan and his partner raced off the beach toward the monsters breaking on a triangle of reef beyond Third Reef Pipeline, a place the Texan had been dreaming of surfing for more than 20 years -- Outside Log Cabins.

That day, Dan Moore towed Ken Bradshaw into the largest wave ever ridden -- a 45-foot wave with an 85-foot face, a wave with the mass of a cathedral and the inertia of runaway train. "I used to think I rode big waves," Bradshaw says later, remembering the day with an awed grin. Indeed, that giant wave was no accidental achievement. The Texan had been working toward it, step by step, ever since he rode his first wave in the Gulf of Mexico 33 years earlier.

Born in Houston, son of an oil-tool manufacturer who kept his family on the move -- Florida, Alabama and back to Houston, 16-year-old Bradshaw ran away from home in 1969 to go surfing. He'd started a year earlier in Surfside, Texas, and traded in his football (he made All-City in ninth grade) and traded heroes, too -- John Wayne for Barry Kanaiaupuni. "Texas is a great place to learn to surf," he says. "You can push your limits during your gestation period because the waves are so unintimidating."

He arrived in Southern California, pumped gas in Encinitas, worked as a bellman at a La Costa hotel, got picked up as a hot young prospect by Sunset Surfboards and stayed with owner Ed Wright. Soon Bradshaw found himself at Windansea during the big south of September 1969 with John Close, Tom Ortner, David Rullo and others. "They were like gods in the water with their thin, big 8-foot guns, and I'm on a 6'6". They did the most beautiful surfing in waves twice as tall as I'd ever seen, and that's when I realized I wanted to ride them."

Bradshaw surfed hard, worked hard and saved money. He went to night school, got his GED and graduated high school in 1971. He trained hard, went on a lacto-vegetarian diet and expanded his lung capacity. He was determined to ride big waves, took his first trip to Hawaii in March of 1972 and returned for good later in the year. He made a point to learn from the best, especially George Downing, Kanaiaupuni, Jeff Hakman, and Eddie Aikau. "It took two full years in Hawaii getting used to the winter surf," he admits. "People don't realize that you can't go over expecting to tear it down. But by the end of the second year, I knew the guys, and I started to blend in."

He surfed a big day at Waimea in March of 1974 and found it easier than he'd expected. Downing said take it one step at a time; Aikau showed him the lineups. He discovered that the bigger the surf, the more aggressive and enthusiastic he became. He picked up sponsors (Sundek, then Quiksilver), won the Duke Kahanamoku Surfing Classic in 1982 and got stunt work in the movies. He became one of the world's elite big-wave riders, surfing every big swell of the past 25 years.

His shaping career proceeded apace, beginning in the winter of 1974 after he'd broken all his boards over a three-day span. He'd watched Ed Wright shape, so he knew the drill, and Barry turned him onto a blank, so he shaped himself a 7'4". "I took it out at Sunset, and it worked so well. I was floored!" He made three more in January and rode his own boards for the rest of the year. By 1976, he was good enough to work for Lightning Bolt, and then he began selling his own custom boards as Bradshaw-Hawaii in 1978. His boards became big in Japan, then Australia.

In 1986, he discovered the outer reefs of the North Shore, paddled for a wave at Outside Log Cabins, but couldn't get down the face. He planned to try it with helicopter support. In 1993, the missing link entered the picture in the form of personal watercraft, and Bradshaw became one of the first dozen surfers to master tow-in surfing. He is currently a director of the World Tow Surfing Association, interfacing with the Coast Guard, the Hawaiian Life Guard Association and other organizations on to help maintain order in today's jet-powered, big wave era.

In the mid-2000s Bradshaw took the surf etiquette crusade to his beloved and increasingly crowded Sunset Beach. After fighting the trend of average surfers using over-sized boards to score the best sets, Ken finally relented and paddled out on his own battleship with "You Win" written in giant letters.

Though he was never a world tour competitor, he is credited with helping coach former girlfriend and seven-time ASP champion, Layne Beachley to her first world title in 1998 -- as well as pushing and towing her into waves of increasing consequence. Though they've long parted, it's likely his name will always be connected with Mark Foo, the big wave rider and formal rival-turned-friend who tragically died at Maverick's in 1994 after wiping out on wave that Bradshaw barely missed.

For the most part, however, big-waves surfing's been good to Bradshaw. He's been featured on major TV shows ("Dateline" NBC, ABC's "Out There", BBC's "Walking on Water", National Geographic's "To Catch a Wave" and the IMAX film Extreme (featuring his historic ride from 1998). His exploits have been chronicled in major magazines such as Smithsonian, Outside, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Penthouse and Ralphs in Australia.

Ken Bradshaw still trains intensely -- swimming, freediving through lava tubes and caves, rock running -- always building his skills for giant surf. He has a house at Sunset Beach, is an avid snowboarder, mentor to a flock of young surfers. But all of it comes second fiddle to his obsession since his first glimpse of overhead surf: conquering the largest wave ever ridden.

-- Drew Kampion (updated, December 2009)

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