Most days, 44-year-old Brazilian Michaela Fregonese juggles the same responsibilities as any parent: running her small travel agency, shuttling her son to and from soccer practice, and squeezing in a workout when she can. It’s a full schedule, one most moms and dads can relate to. But unlike other time-strapped parents, Fregonese spends her off-hours chasing mountains of moving water — and winning big-wave awards in the process.
Just weeks ago, she claimed Ride of the Year and Biggest Wave at the SURFER Big Wave Challenge Awards, thanks to a liquid skyscraper she towed into at Jaws in December 2024 — a ferocious wave now considered among the heaviest ever surfed by a woman at the iconic break.
Fregonese’s journey to big-wave greatness, however, began far away from the ocean.
Born in Curitiba – the inland capital of Brazil’s southern state of Paraná and about an hour drive from the nearest ocean – Fregonese learned to surf when she was 12 years old, and could only surf on the weekends when she made the trip to the coast. “I [wanted to live] near the ocean [so badly], that I would dream that there was a wave breaking in front of my mom’s house,” laughs Fregonese today. “But when I turned 17, I moved to Florianopolis and have lived on the ocean ever since.”
From the moment her feet first hit the wax, Fregonese gravitated towards waves of consequence. When she was 21, she began doing six-month stints in Hawaii and Indonesia, cutting her teeth in the two hemispheres’ heaviest lineups. Preferably, she notes, of the tubing variety.
Her heavy wave pursuit was put on pause in 2008, however, when she got pregnant and gave birth to her son, Vittorio. It wasn’t until 2017, when her son was nearly 10 years old, that she got her first taste of XXL surf at Mexico’s most feared beachbreak. “I went to Puerto Escondido for the first time for a big-wave competition and it was there that I got my first barrel with a 10-foot gun,” says Fregonese. “That’s where I decided to become a professional big wave rider. I wanted to become one of the best big wave surfers in the world.”
Related: Full Replay: The 2025 Big Wave Challenge Award Show
Just two years later, Fregonese staked her claim as a serious force in the world of big-wave surfing when she towed into a bomb at Jaws, earning her a second-place finish for Ride of the Year in the Big Wave Challenge Awards. She also started making regular pilgrimages to Nazare, to test her mettle at the Portuguese monster. But it was during the week of Christmas in 2024 that Fregonese made space for herself in the history books of big-wave surfing.
“I saw a very good swell for Jaws in the forecast, and as I truly love Jaws, I didn’t even think twice and just went,” she says. “The biggest challenge was leaving my son for Christmas and New Year’s.”
On her second day in Maui, Fregonese linked up with fellow Brazilian charger Inaldo Vieira, trading pulls on the Yamaha and whipping each other into a few warm-up bombs. The swell kept flexing, building into what big-wave filmmaker Tim Bonython called ‘probably one of the top five swell events I’ve ever documented.’”
“The next day, December 22nd, we arrived at Jaws about 10:00 o’clock,” remembers Fregonese. “I saw some of the most insane paddle drops I’ve ever seen in my whole life. The waves started to get bigger and bigger, the paddlers left and the tow-in teams started.”
Around 3:30 PM, Lucas Fink, Brazilian charger and Fregonese’s tow partner for the second half of the day, turned to Fregonese and asked if she was ready to get the wave of the day.
“I saw him pull his partner into some really good waves that day, so I told him, ‘If you put me in one of those waves you put your partner, it will be perfect,’” remembers Fregonese. “Then I told him, ‘What God sent, it has to be.’ So I closed my eyes and started praying….and then, that beautiful wave came.”
What Fregonese calls beautiful, in this case, is bone-chillingly terrifying to most. “It wasn’t easy to surf that wave,” remembers Fregonese. “It doesn’t look like it, but it was very bumpy, with strong swell energy [behind it]. Staying on my board all the way to the end was a challenge. When Fink [dropped me off at] the boat [in the channel], I was shaking from head to toe with so much adrenaline. I had never felt that feeling in my life, it was incredible.”
Less than a year later, that ride earned her two Big Wave Challenge awards in front of a room full of planet’s most fearless and accomplished chargers – fulfilling the very goal she had set when she first tackled an oversized wave at Puerto Escondido.”
“It was the best feeling ever,” says Fregonese. “I wasn’t expecting to win two categories. I knew my wave could win the biggest wave because it was a massive one, but when they announced my name on the Ride of the Year too, I got so stoked. It was for sure the best night of my life.”
Now, with two trophies on her proverbial mantle, Fregonese has her eyes set on the coming winter – and her bags packed for any purple blob swirling towards Nazare or the Hawaiian Islands. But in the meantime, she’s soaking up time with her now 17-year-old son, who seems to have inherited his mom’s drive for greatness.
“Vittorio is crazy about soccer,” says Fregonese. “He’s very dedicated, and his dream is to become a professional soccer player. I’ve tried everything to make him a surfer – he surfs well, better than me in small waves, actually – but he is scared of big-wave surfing. [Being a mom] is the most important thing in my life. I am so grateful to be a mom and achieve my goals.”