Dane Kealoha, a surfing legend and pioneer of the sport, has died. He was 64.
The news was confirmed by Hawaii News Now, reporting that “he passed away peacefully after battling cancer.” In the days preceding his death, the surf world began sharing fond memories of the legendary surfer – like 1977 World Champ, Shaun Tomson.
Tomson wrote:
“When I first met Dane back in 1976, he immediately became one of my favorite surfers – absolute raw power and foot to the floor attitude. No close together ballerina feet softness, but a powerful and beautiful classically pure Hawaiian style, charting back to the great Eddie Aikau.
“Dane was on the cutting edge of progression – inventing the backside pig dog technique at Pipe and winning the Masters in 1983, and carving up Backdoor and Sunset with creativity and ferocity.
“He was a truly gifted tube-rider, attacking the spinning tunnels with machismo, commitment and an attacking rhythm like a Hawaiian warrior going into battle.”
Kealoha’s tuberiding innovation is often mentioned when describing the Hawaiian surfer’s impact on the sport. Like, as Tomson wrote, the pigdog stance at Pipeline. Look at any surfer today going backside at Pipe – or any tube wave, really – and they’re all doing it.
For more on Kealoha’s surfing legacy, here’s some highlights from Matt Warshaw’s Encyclopedia of Surfing:
“Glowering power surfer from Honolulu, Hawaii; world-ranked #2 in 1980, remembered as the best tuberider of his generation, and often credited as inventor of the ‘pigdog’ tuberiding stance. Kealoha was born (1958) and raised in Honolulu, the son of a pure-blooded Hawaiian carpenter father. He tried surfing for the first time at age ten at Waikiki, accompanied by his father; after wiping out on his opening wave, Kealoha swam for shore crying, ran across the street, and threw his arms around a tree. He didn’t surf again until age 14.
“At 5’9″, 185 pounds, with thighs like a fullback, Kealoha was a born power surfer. He rode in a wide stance, slightly hunkered over, pressing his board into deeply chiseled turns and cutbacks. Kealoha also had an infallible sense of where to find speed on any given wave and Zen-like composure while inside the tube. South African surfer Shaun Tomson had in the mid-’70s invented a weaving method for tuberiding, allowing him to ride deeper and more creatively than any surfer before him; Kealoha improved on Tomson’s technique and by the late ’70s had taken over as the world’s best tuberider, able to find his way out of the deepest caverns, especially at Backdoor Pipeline in Hawaii.
“In the early ’80s, Kealoha developed a compact drop-knee method of riding the tube—originally called the “lay-forward,” later known as the “tripod” or “pigdog”— that eventually allowed backsiders to ride nearly as deep inside the wave as frontsiders. Meanwhile, the dark Kealoha scowl frightened most surf journalists off, and convinced virtually all other surfers, even his world tour peers, to give him a wide berth. Australian surf journalist Tim Baker described Kealoha as “solitary and strangely quiet” while waiting for a wave. ‘He seems almost anchored, not bobbing around like the rest of us at the mercy of the temperamental Hawaiian waters, but somehow rooted to the spot.'”
Rest in power, Dane.
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