“In a couple of months I hope to be at war again.”
One of the lovelier things about the whole surfing biz is, despite all propaganda to the contrary, extreme sports and so on, it’s wildly safe.
You might get a slightly elevated heart rate every now and again, maybe a board flies past, a VAL bomb drops onto you, a closeout set looks like it’ll extinguish the life out of you but never does. I’ve been dodging tubes for a lifetime and the worst blooding I’ve had is a board in the face and a board in the ass (thank you, sir, may I have another etc) when a VAL’s duck dive failed underwater.
Still, injuries happen. And sometimes they ain’t pretty, ain’t pretty at all.
The teenage shredder from the Canary Islands Alejo Valido, thirteen, is as much a prodigy as they come. He’s sponsored by Kelly Slater’s manager Stephen Bell’s famous Euroglass board factory, Billabong and Bradley Surfboards. He will, likely, join some sort of tour in a few years and shake the fruit from that still-lucrative tree, make money, travel, experience the highs and lows of competition, dine on the pleasures of life.
Valido, however, is in hozzy after almost being killed when one of his surfboard’s fins became almost entirely lodged in his sacrum, the bone that’s connected to the pelvis.
The x-rays make for compelling viewing, below, as do the still photos of the injury.
Not real sure about how it happened, how it felt, if being reminded of his mortality at such a tender age has matured him considerably, but I do got an interview lined up. Maybe tomoz. Time difference is tough.
In a post to his five thousand followers on Instagram little Alejo thanked everyone that helped him remain on this mortal coil, the paediatric doctors, the people that got him on the medivac plane to Gran Canaria, and signed off,
“In a couple of months I hope to be at war again.”
Epic kid.
