Marcio Freire, the legendary Brazilian surfer who featured in the 2016 surfing documentary Mad Dogs, has died while riding the monster waves of Nazaré in Portugal.
Freire died on Thursday (local time) while surfing in Praia do Norte (Nazaré), home of the underwater Nazaré Canyon and the site of the largest waves ever surfed.
“A 47-year-old man of Brazilian nationality died this afternoon after falling while practising surfing,” Portugal’s national maritime authority said in a statement.
“The rescuers found that the victim was in cardio-respiratory arrest, immediately starting resuscitation manoeuvres on the sand. After several attempts, it was not possible to reverse the situation.”
Fellow Brazilian surfer Thiago Jacare called Freire “more than an idol” and “a true hero”.
Sports photographer Fred Pompermayer paid tribute to Freire as a “great man, a very good friend and a legendary surfer” who “was such a happy spirit, always with a smile on his face”.
The huge waves of Nazaré are formed due to the presence of a deep undersea canyon just off the coast.
“The part of a wave travelling in deep water – over the canyon – moves faster than the part of the wave in shallow shelf water,” Nasa’s Earth Observatory notes.
The faster part of the wave then hits the canyon wall and is forced upwards, sometimes colliding with the slower part of the wave and producing the supersized waves that have attracted surfers to Nazaré for years.
In 2011, Hawaiian surfer Garrett McNamara set a world record at Nazaré by conquering a giant wave of 23.8m.
Brazilian Rodrigo Koxa bested McNamara in 2017 with a wave of 24.4m, also at Nazare, and German Sebastian Steudtner broke the record there again in 2020 with a wave of 26.2m.
