For most pro surfers on the Championship Tour, lay days are all about rest.
Y’know…kicking back, recharging the batteries for when the competition is called back on, spending time with family, friends, their team, dialing in surfboards, etc.
But South Africa’s Matthew McGillivray is not like most pro surfers.
Instead, McGillivray is a base jumping lunatic. And whenever the contest isn’t running, he’s running…off a cliff. Or out of an airplane. Like during the recent VIVO Rio Pro, which saw a slew of lay days, and also saw McGillivray finding a Rio de Janeiro ledge, which he hucked himself over, pulled his parachute, and soaked in a view of the city that no other surfer on Tour (let alone not many humans) got to see.
This is nothing new for McGillivray, either. Scrolling through his Instagram, there’s just about as many clips and photos of him surfing as there are base jumping. There’s even one where he blends the two – yeah, jumping off a bridge with his surfboard…not sure how that one panned out. (Most likely not very well for the surfboard.)
In an interview with the WSL, McGillivray discussed his love for jumping off high things:
“I grew up being fascinated with flying as a kid. When I was pretty young, I saw a base jumping video on YouTube and knew it was something I wanted to do.
“When I was 16 I started doing my skydiving license with my older brothers. I realized skydiving was a lot scarier than I thought and that it was one of the best feelings in the world.
“In 2018, after building up enough experience skydiving, my brother, Jonathan and I did a trip over to Twin Falls, Idaho, to do a Base Jumping course at the only legal base jumping bridge in the USA.
“I’ve done around 80 base jumps now and my brother many more. It’s a very intense and beautiful activity and I hope to pursue it more in the future when my surfing career takes the back foot.”
Keep an eye on McGillivray; more to come, in the water and the air.
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