If Ryan Miller isn’t the hardest working man in surfing, he’s definitely close.
So, when a special run of swell popped up for Teahupo’o 10 days before the beginning of the waiting period for the 2024 Shiseido Tahiti Pro, Miller dropped everything at home and changed his entire itinerary. Red eye flight, zero sleep, straight into the channel at Chopes at daybreak for day 1. After going hard all day, Miller still downloaded, edited, and emailed over a special selection of images during his very first night in Tahiti. His email read, simply: “Straight off the plane into 12 hours straight at Teahupo’o. So exhausted I can’t even type a coherent email. Tomorrow straight back at it and I couldn’t be more excited.”
The following few days, the photos kept coming. They went from good, to great, to holy shit you’ve got to see these.
After day four, Miller came up for air just long enough to reflect on the wild run of waves, and to caption some of his favorite moments, which we’ve curated below.
“These past four days have been one of the most intense runs of swell I’ve ever seen in my lifetime,” recalls Miller. “I’ve definitely seen one-off days better than this, but the quantity of energy in the water over a four day period has been unparalleled. This place, the culture, the mountains, the deep water into shallow reef waves…all of it really brings out an extra level of positivity in my spirit. It creeps up on me every time and I am thankful I have been able to experience it.”
All photos and captions by Ryan Miller