Tag "Brazilians"
Cowabunga! Brazilian Rodrigo Koxa Breaks World Record Surfing 80-Foot Wave
Brazilian Rodrigo Koxa has broken a world record by riding the biggest wave ever surfed, according to the World Surf League.
Koxa mastered the monster 80-footer off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, in November.
His record-breaking feat only became official Saturday, when it was recognized with the Quiksilver XXL Biggest Wave Award at a World Surf League ceremony in Los Angeles.
“The award goes to the surfer who, by any means available, catches the biggest wave of the year,” the league said in a statement.
“Not only did Koxa win this year’s honor, but he now holds the Guinness World Record for the biggest wave surfed.” The previous record was set in 2011 by Garrett McNamara, who rode a 78-foot wave, also at Nazaré, authenticated by the Billabong XXL Global Big Wave Awards judging committee, and confirmed by Guinness.
Here’s his ride: Other surfers — including McNamara — have claimed they broke the 2011 record, but Koxa’s ride is the only one that has been confirmed by the WSL and Guinness records.
“I got a present from God,” Koxa told The Inertia online surf news site after the awards ceremony.
“It was the best present I’ve ever had.” Koxa said he almost was killed in 2014 at Nazaré, where many of the world’s biggest surfing waves are.
“For months later, I had bad dreams, I didn’t travel, I got scared, and my wife helped me psychologically,” he said.
“Now, I’m just so happy.” Among other honors handed out Saturday, the award for Wipeout of the Year went to British surfer Andrew Cotton, who broke his back in a horrific fall at Nazaré.
At least 7.7m Brazilians forced to leave homes since 2000, study finds
Of those, 6.4 million moved after large-scale flooding, droughts and other natural disasters, while 1.2 million were forced out by large-scale construction projects like dams.
But once researchers began gathering information from local and national government, private companies, development banks, the World Bank and activist groups they soon abandon an initial estimate of 1.7 million people.
Data on people forced to migrate by disasters came from government departments.
Many more have probably been forced to move by Brazil’s soaring violent crime rates, but a “code of silence” makes compiling that data impossible, Muggah said.
The interactive FMO platform presents data, maps and video and includes emblematic cases of mega-projects and natural disasters such as the 2015 Mariana dam collapse in which 19 people died and nearly 1,400 lost their homes.
Floods in the north-east of Brazil in 2009 killed 43 people and forced 343,000 from their homes.
In 2015 alone, 64,000 people moved because of a five-year drought in the semi-arid interior regions of Brazil’s north-east.
In 2000 10,000 people were moved for the Itá dam in the south of the country, the FMO calculated.
Activist groups said numbers could be much higher and that migrants suffered from a lack of decent housing and government care.
“There is a lack of water.
