“Mullaghmore was actually the first big wave I ever surfed,” Ben Larg tells me. He was 14 at the time. Ben is calling from his family home in Tiree, a small island off the west coast of Scotland with a population of roughly 650 people. Ben calls Tiree, “When it’s sunny, it’s like the Caribbean but cold.”
Ben came into surfing from an unusual path. His father won kitesurfing lessons by collecting recycled soda bottles in Scotland. He became hooked and took up the sport on Tiree, where he later started a kiting and surfing school on the island. Ben promptly fell into the water sports line. But however unorthodox his entry into surfing, Ben felt the oft-referenced insatiable lure to meaner stuff. A certain left across the Irish Sea caught his attention.
“I was desperate to get into big wave surfing when I was like 10 years old,” Ben said. “Mullaghmore was the first one I went to. I actually went to Ireland to surf another big wave, Aileen’s, but it didn’t work out. But there was a swell for Mullaghmore. We linked up with Peter Conroy, who runs the Irish Tow Surf Rescue Club, and he took us up there. I wasn’t even going to surf. I was 14 years old.
“He was like, ‘Just watch from the ski for the first time. It’s super solid today.’ So I sat on the ski for like four hours, and then this guy named Dylan Scott came up to me. He was like, ‘Do you want a shot, grom?’ I thought if I didn’t say yes I might never get this opportunity again. It was my first time towing.”
In the five years since Ben has spent serious time in Europe’s heavier waves, earned backing from Red Bull and trains with Andrew Cotton at Nazaré.
“Me and Cotty in the last year have been working together loads and talking more,” Ben said. I think we may make a UK team for next year’s tow challenge (atNazaré. “Hopefully, we’re looking at a long partnership. He’s a good mentor.”
They say proper partnerships need some adversity to come ou stronger, and that’s what happened to Ben and Cotty at a November Mullaghmore swell that turned into Ben’s SURFER Big Wave Challenge entry. The waves were pumping, but Ben got frustrated with the lack of results. So he urged Cotty to take him deeper, and the result is playing above.
“He ended up towing me super deep, and I made it worse because I kinda faded,” Ben said. “Took a bad line. I ended up with no speed at the bottom. I saw the section forming in front of me. The boys said from the channel it was a nuts wave. There was a step/boil in front of me, and I was like, ‘Oh shit, I’m way behind this thing.’ I straightened out, hit a step and jumped. Basically got absolutely annihilated. Felt like I got hit by a card. Snapped Cotty’s favorite board too. And lost the Go-Pro. The worst wipeout of my life, never felt anything like it.”
Related: Big Wave Surfers Take On Massive Mullaghmore in New Edit from Surfing Visions