What a week in Surfing. There's been big waves, big wipeouts and big controversy in the surfing world after many of the World Tours best surfers were not ALLOWED to compete in Cape Fear.

But that's news for page 16, front and centre is the footage from what will be remembered as one of the worlds heaviest surfing competitions of all time. The Eddie Aikau earlier this year was good, but Red Bull Cape Fear was just plain gnarly.

Telling the story of three waves that changed his life, was Blake Thorton, winner of day one and one of the standouts of the event. "The first one was nice," he said; "It's impossible to know how big the waves are when you're on them. A bit of east, it was tapered, I think I got barrelled, I felt the spit. It spat it guts out, the boys were at me in the channel so it was a good one.

After that I got a little grower, nice fast one, it kinda threw out of the barrel.

The last one was the flogging of a lifetime. It was as violent a beating as I've ever had. I fell and was just weightless. I got flipped, cartwheeled, my jersey got ripped over my head. I hit the reef once, softly, because it kinda spat me back. Then I was held under and got a gasp just before the second one. When I got that gasp I saw how close I was to the rocks and I got lucky that I got to get deep enough under it and semi-flushed out and then the boys came and got me. I was just in all sorts, mate. I've had wipeouts before but that was bad as you can imagine."

Huge chunky slabs of frothed up dirty water, growing out of the murk and barrelling out of its mind on the reef only 2ft under. According to the surfers, Cape Solander has never (EVER) been bigger than it was those two days. Funnily enough, it wasn't some remote bombie, or tucked away on a deserted island. Footage of the day has the towering skyline of Sydney city in the background. It's not even 20km away!

Eventually winning the event after two days of epic rides and crazy beatings, was Russell Bierke. He only caught two waves on day one, but with one shining bright he went through to round two and dominated the second day. Oh, did we mention he's a teenager? The 18 year blondie from the south coast of NSW had posters of his fellow competitors on his bedroom walls, and he snatched away the win!

As Bierke rises to his rightfully claimed seat at the round table of big wave legends, the rest of the world is going bonkers over the highlights reel from the Red Bull Cape Fear Contest. Check it out to relive the heaviest competition surfing has ever seen.

#News #Surfing #Deep #Epic