Still Celebrating You Mark Foo
“Waves are the voices of tides. Tides are life.” – Tamora Pierce
Foo helped elevate the popularity of the sport, with his talent, courage, and enthusiasm, and was certainly recognized as one of the greatest big-wave surfers to ever ride the waves. Mark was a favorite subject of photographers, and he had his own cable television surfing program. “If you want to ride the ultimate wave, you have to be willing to pay the ultimate price” was Foo’s philosophy, which he certainly lived until the day of his final ride.
In the surfing sport, Mark Foo’s death has brought about a continuing discourse regarding the safe use on extreme size waves of surfboard ‘leashes’ (a flexible plastic cord which connects, by an ankle belt, surfboards to the ankle of the trailing leg of the surfer when he’s riding his surfboard). Many in the surfing sport believe that Foo’s surfboard leash may have caused or contributed to his death. The leash proponents defend the leash as a useful convenience and as insurance against losing the surfboard, a form of flotation device, in case of a ‘wipe out’, and the leash is a means for the fallen surfer to find his way to the surface air by following the leash cord to the floating surfboard above him on the water surface. Opponents of surfboard leashes in big surf state that a leash can cause the surfrider to collide with his board in a ‘wipe out’, causing head injuries, and the leash can also loop around arms, legs or the surfer’s neck when underwater, and thus dangerously restrict movement to safety or, worse, strangle the surfer with his own leash. Quick-release velcro tear-open-collared leashes have since become standard surfing equipment to address some, but not all, of these dangers. The debates and concerns continue unresolved to this date, and these worthwhile discussions of water safety are, perhaps, the legacy of Foo’s unfortunate demise.[1]
