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    "parsed_content": "Laura Crane has dealt with trauma away from her beloved surfing AA.vision\/Courtesy of Laura CraneLast December, Laura Crane had one of the best days of her life.The British surfer had been competing in the Nazare Big Wave Challenge at the famed Praia do Norte \u2014 a wild section of Portugal\u2019s west coast where waves, in storm season, can reach over 25 metres high. It is these waves \u2014 the \u201cbombs\u201d, as they are known in the sport \u2014 that big wave surfers seek out, rushing headlong towards the danger rather than obeying every rational instinct and fleeing.In December, a technical fault had brought an early end to the day. While others packed up, Crane, her jet ski driver Antonio Laureano (in big wave surfing the waves are too big to paddle into, so surfers hold on to a rope and are towed into them by their jet ski driver) and her brother went back into the water, determined not to waste a moment of Nazare\u2019s world-famous swell.\u201cI actually wasn\u2019t going to surf,\u201d recalled Crane, speaking via video from her home in Nazare. \u201cI was just going to drive for Tony, and my brother was going to get a couple of waves. But we got out there and the boys only wanted one each so there was time for me to get another one. And that one wave was the wave.\u201d\u201cThis is going to be a bomb, get ready,\u201d said Laureano as he towed Crane into a wall of water bigger than she\u2019d ever seen before.\u201cAt that moment, you always have the choice,\u201d says Crane. \u201cDo I want this wave or not?\u201dThere was only ever one answer to that question. For the two years leading up to that day, Crane\u2019s purpose had been simple: chase the giants. The monster waves. The kind of waves no British woman had ever pursued.That day, she got it: a wave deemed big enough to potentially break the world record for one ridden by a woman, set by Brazil\u2019s Maya Gabeira, who surfed a 73.5ft (22.4m) wave at Nazare in February 2020. For context, that is about the same height as a seven-storey building.\n Laura Crane surfs at Nazare in DecemberChristina Pahnke \u2013 sampics\/Corbis via Getty ImagesCrane was lying on her surfboard staring at the sky when she heard Laureano telling her to \u201cget ready\u201d.\u201cThat\u2019s when that initial feeling of fear registers, which is incredibly important,\u201d she said. \u201cYou need to register what you\u2019re about to do. Your heartbeat starts racing. You\u2019re in fight or flight, which is important because your body needs to be in that mode to go.\u201dThe feeling of speeding down the face of a 60 or 70ft wave is, according to Crane, \u201chow I imagine flying feels with no parachute.\u201dIt\u2019s also far less dream-like than it looks. As the board flies down, Crane\u2019s legs become locked in a deep squat so that she\u2019s as close as possible to the water, ready to absorb the bumps that thrust up from beneath her board.\u201cBecause of the sheer size of the waves, there\u2019s usually a lot of bumps and troughs in the waves which can often be up to a metre or two-metres big,\u201d she explained. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a two-metre wave within the wave. I compare it to going down a black run mogul hill at 50km an hour and you can only go straight.\u201dMost important, says Crane, is the ability to recognise the difference between rational and irrational fears. \u201cI can still have irrational fears of something terrible going on in my day-to-day life but when it comes to my sport, that\u2019s something that we train daily, because you\u2019re constantly having to battle your doubt. You have to trust your training; your body; your mind; your equipment; the ocean.\u201cThen it\u2019s about not letting your thoughts fly. As soon as your mind starts to go to the \u2018What ifs\u2019, you\u2019ve already lost it and things go really wrong.\u201dJust 48 hours after riding the biggest wave of her life, Crane went looking for more in Nazare.The swell was similar; the \u201cbombs\u201d just as enticing for the big wave thrill-seekers. But this time things did go wrong: instead of riding the wave with the same smooth precision of two days earlier, she wiped out. Worse, the fall ruptured her anterior cruciate ligaments and ended her season.\u201cIt happened mid-wipeout,\u201d she said. \u201cThere was a lot of ego. I\u2019d just got the best wave of my life. I was like, \u2018OK, I\u2019m going to beat it again\u2019, and I didn\u2019t. I didn\u2019t listen to my body; I didn\u2019t listen to the fact we were tired and that my equipment wasn\u2019t properly prepared (Crane hadn\u2019t put her ankle strap on properly, which was why she fell on the wave).\u201cYou always check your straps. You always check the equipment. That\u2019s the thing that\u2019s hit home more than anything is how blas\u00e9 you quickly become in such a dangerous scenario.\u201dA few days before we spoke, Crane was sent a picture of her wiping out and realised for the first time how big the wave was. \u201cAbsolutely massive, and I was treating it like it was just an average training day.\u201d\n Laura Crane learned the hard way never to take the sea\u2019s power lightlyMaddie Meddings\/courtesy of Laura CraneWhat does it feel like when a wave of water that\u2019s taller than most buildings hits you?\u201cWhen you\u2019re going as quick as we are with tow surfing \u2014 they say it\u2019s around 50km an hour \u2014 hitting the water is just like hitting a road. But I think the more time you spend here (Nazare), the more used you become to the pounding you get. I remember even going up to my driver that day and saying the impact didn\u2019t feel so bad.\u201d\n \n \n \n Far scarier for Crane and others in the big wave community is the time you can spend underwater when wiping out in waves of that size.\u201cYou never know when you\u2019re going to come up. You can train your breath, hold as long as you want, but at the end of the day it\u2019s up to the ocean and when she\u2019s going to let go of you. I guess that\u2019s what you have to surrender to.\u201dCrane first spoke to The Athletic in February. She was in reflective mood as she prepared for an operation to have her ACL repaired. She spoke of feeling \u201clost\u201d, and of trying to figure out who she was away from the towering waves of the Atlantic.One of the people helping her through that time was fellow surfer Arran Strong, a friend since they first met as a 17-year-old. A few months after we spoke in July, Strong went missing during a long-distance stand-up paddle off the coast of Portugal. Rescuers searched the water for four days before calling off the search, with the 28-year-old presumed dead.Some weeks later, Crane wrote a note on social media, paying tribute to her \u201cmagical best friend\u201d who she says had shown her and many others what it means to be \u201ctruly authentic\u201d. Diagnosed with Alpha-1 \u2014 a rare genetic condition that can affect the lungs and liver \u2014 at birth, and epilepsy in his late teens, she said he never allowed those circumstances to define him.\u201cBut his greatest achievement isn\u2019t a ranking,\u201d she wrote, \u201cit is the person he has chosen to be: Straight-up. Honest. Real. Raw.\u201cThrough surfing and his work as an ambassador for the Lovexair Foundation (dedicated to supporting people with respiratory illnesses) he turned his challenges into a reason to help others.\n Laura Crane with her \u2018magical best friend\u2019 Arran StrongInstagram\/lauraloucrane\u201cHe reminds us that authenticity isn\u2019t about perfection, it\u2019s about embracing who you are, and choosing to meet the world with courage, kindness and love. That is Arran.\u201dArran\u2019s tragedy was a reminder that surfers take the ultimate risk every time they set out to sea, and of the close bonds shared by those who inhabit a unique sporting world.Crane, 31, has been immersed in it from the age of six. She started surfing in the cold Atlantic waters of Croyde \u2013 a village in Devon, England that shifts between a bustling surf hub in the summer and quiet coastal community in the winter.At 14 she became a British champion. By then she\u2019d been a sponsored athlete for two years, backed by a world-famous surf brand. She spent her teenage years getting to travel the world doing what she loved. She was living her dream, but it came at a cost.\u201cI was a British girl from the south-west coast of the UK. It was crazy. I would have done anything to keep that contract. And that industry back then absolutely knew that. They knew that all of us girls would have.\u201cThey pushed that. They used it to their advantage. We were totally over-sexualised and undervalued for the talent that we had. The impact that had on all of us in our later teen years was dreadful.\u201dBy 15, Crane had bulimia. The eating disorder ran her life for almost 15 years and stole the love she had for her sport. She saw that her value to the brand backing her was her body and she was desperate to keep it the same at 14 and 15 as it had been at 12.\n Laura Crane is always in search of the next big waveBen Hartley\/courtesy of Laura Crane\u201cNaturally your body doesn\u2019t stay the same and that was really difficult. I felt so out of control of everything else but this was one thing I always had to control. I was travelling lots; we were doing amazing photoshoots that made everybody at home say, \u2018Oh, you should be so grateful to be doing all these things\u2019.\u201cThe reality of it wasn\u2019t at all what I had dreamed or how it looked to people back home. It was this weird feeling of, you should be grateful, but actually, it wasn\u2019t a particularly nice environment for a teenage girl.\u201cSurfing wasn\u2019t a sport; an escape and this connection with nature any more. It was Instagram likes on bikini pics.\u201dCrane retired from surfing at the age of 21. She was too ill to travel. Her parents flew her home and she agreed to start therapy \u2014 for their sake more than for hers. She could see how much it was hurting them to see her wasting away but in reality, she was not ready to accept help.Two years after walking away from surfing she signed up for the reality TV show Love Island in a bid to grow her profile so that she wouldn\u2019t need the platform of surfing. The truth was that Crane was still locked in the iron grip of bulimia and would remove her microphone whenever she went into the bathroom.\n Laura Crane was a surfing ambassador for Team GB at the Tokyo 2020 OlympicsAlex Livesey\/Getty ImagesThe first story she saw when she came out of the show described her as being: \u201cToo masculine. My shoulders were too broad; I was too muscly; I didn\u2019t get my nails done. That was pivotal to me seeing that I was never going to be happy with the way that I looked if I put all the value in what other people saw of my appearance.\u201dShe still resisted getting help until the moment her body made it clear it was no longer an option. Four months after Love Island she contracted life-threatening sepsis following surgery to remove a cyst on her fallopian tube. \u201cThat was my body trying to tell me: this isn\u2019t our place; get the hell out of here. It was the first time I saw that I wasn\u2019t invincible and that I was damaging my body by what I was doing \u2013 my immune system was getting weaker.\u201cThat was when I decided it was time to take care of my body.\u201dCrane still has therapy and says she will for the rest of her life. It has given her what she and her therapist call the \u201cbulimia toolkit\u201d, which she can pull out in moments of high stress. In those situations, food habits are the first thing she has to keep an eye on. \u201cI will still naturally fall into those old habits. But it\u2019s almost like an instinctual reflex to notice it now before it happens. So it\u2019s your mind working with you rather than against you on those kinds of triggers.\u201dSomething else therapy gave her was a realisation that the narrative around her surfing career had been written by other people. The more she healed, the more she understood that she could rewrite the script.\u201cI had this new self-belief that I could overcome big things. My eating disorder was something that had run my life for years and years so overcoming that huge thing opened the floodgates of: \u2018Let\u2019s see what else we can overcome and do\u2019.\u201dShe got back in the gym. Returned to the things she loved: cycling; running; swimming. She was training like a professional athlete but one without any goals. Seeing her brother enjoying the modest waves where they lived, she got back on her surfboard. Together, the pair took a trip to a big wave surf spot in Newquay. There, she was spotted by former World Championship Tour surfer Eric Rebiere who saw a strength he believed would make her a perfect fit for big-wave surfing.\u201cThat was the first time in my whole professional sporting career that anybody \u2014 especially a man \u2014 had seen me for my physical ability rather than the way that I looked,\u201d said Crane. \u201cThe fact that he saw my body to be strong and powerful and a bit of a game-changer was really powerful for me.\u201dShe accepted his offer of teaching her how to tow-surf, uprooted her life from Devon to Nazare and threw herself into training body and mind for waves that were unlike any she had seen before.\u201cThe first time I\u2019d ever seen giant waves was definitely the first time I surfed Nazare. I look back at those waves now and they feel absolutely tiny, but for me that day was about so much more than catching a big wave. It was all the self-doubt that I\u2019d had for my physical ability and all the exterior doubt from the industry and peers. It all just got shut down that day.\u201cI had proved to myself that I could do it. From that day I definitely started to move with more self-belief and more intent for the message that I wanted to share.\u201dBig-wave surfing has traditionally been a sport dominated by men. Crane has experienced three seasons in Nazare (she finished third in the women\u2019s contest in 2025) and pays credit to Gabeira for blazing a trail at a time when many felt it was not a place for female surfers.That joy has been ripped from her in recent months but a return no longer feels so far away. After 29 weeks of gruelling ACL rehab, she was given the go-ahead to begin cycling outside.She will not be tackling the monstrous waves of Nazare for a while yet, but she will already be counting down the days. She knows that that is where she is meant to be.\u201cAs a woman, it feels incredibly empowering,\u201d she said. \u201cEvery time I send myself down a face of a big wave I just have this overpowering feeling when I come off the back of it that this is always where we were meant to be. And that never seems to go.\u201d\nSarah Shephard spent 10 years at Sport magazine before becoming Deputy Head of Content at The Coaches' Voice. She has also written for publications such as The Times, The Guardian and The Sunday Times Magazine, among others.Follow Sep 23, 2026SPONSORED BYConnections: Sports EditionSpot the pattern. Connect the termsFind the hidden link between sports termsSPONSORED BYPlay today's puzzleWhat did you think of this story?MEHSOLIDAWESOME",
    "published_at": "2026-09-21T17:38:28+00:00",
    "author_name": "Sarah Shephard",
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    "ai_headline": "Meet Laura Crane, the surfer who conquered 20m waves \u2014 and something much, much bigger",
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