Australian surfer Matt Formston. Photo: YouTube / Bonsai Films
At the age of 5, Australian surfer Matt Formston was diagnosed with macular dystrophy, a rare eye condition that left him with only 3 percent of his vision.
Instead of letting that limit him, Formston decided he would dedicate his life to proving that he could do anything.
Now, the 46-year-old is a world champion paralympian, cyclist, author and motivational speaker - and he's just added another record under his belt - as the first ever blind surfer to conquer the Nazare break in Portugal - otherwise known as the biggest wave in the world.
His feat is the subject of a new film called The Blind Sea. Formston told RNZ's Kathryn Ryan the film is all about proving that people with disabilities can achieve incredible things.
"I've been surfing since I was 5-years-old ... I've been a world champion in two sports, I'm a business executive, I've played multiple instruments, I've done lots of things to a high level. None of that happened because I was given good DNA, I just work hard at things."
Formston has been chasing his waves all his life - but the idea to try Nazare only came up in 2022, about six months into the process of filming The Blind Sea.
"I said to the director at the beginning of the process, I'll surf pretty much any wave in the world, just not Nazare. It was just off the cards.
"Then I built capacity, my team built more trust in me, I built more trust in my team, and it became something that was on the table ... we stopped filming at the end of 2022 and the last part of that was all about Nazare."
The Nazare break is 51 feet high - about as high as a five-story building - with giant waves smashing up against a lighthouse. The presence of an underwater canyon causes huge Atlantic swells to assemble in the depths, and creates huge waves that break at uneven speeds.
"It breaks because of the way the canyon is, there's refracting waves, there's a submarine wave that goes through the canyon, and it bounces off the canyon and creates this surface wave that's so big, it's basically triple the size of any waves around it.
"There's so much going on, it's a warfield, there's waves breaking everywhere ... it's the biggest, most powerful, most challenging wave in the world I've heard, and one of the most dangerous waves in the world."
Blind surfer Matt Formston has just conquered the 51-foot Nazare break - the biggest wave in the world. Photo: Supplied
Nazare is known as the Mecca of big-wave surfing and attracts some of the world's most fearless surfers. But with visual impairment, undertaking this feat has to come with a lot of safety precaution and preparation, Formston said.
"It's a serious place, someone unfortunately lost their life six weeks after we were there ... it's a real risk."
Formston was aided by a safety team of four people on jetskis, who directed him where to go by the sound of a whistle. The surfer has no central vision - it's largely a blur - so he really had to listen and feel his way around the waves.
"If you imagine you're driving in your car, if it's pouring with rain or you take sandpaper to your windscreen until you blur out 97 percent of the clarity, that's the best I see out of my right eye. It's like looking through soup, it's just blurs and lines."
"When I compete in smaller waves, I've got one buddy who basically tells me what's coming, he'll talk me through paddling north, south, east, west. When we go to Nazare, it steps up significantly.
"I had a safety team of four jetskis. My first safety was my tow-driver, he tows me into the wave that's travelling 50km an hour, so I'm letting go of the rope at about 65km an hour and I go faster as I go down the wave."
When Formston is in the zone, there's very little room for things to go wrong - his team is at the top of the waves on a jetski while he's at the very bottom. He's travelling at huge speed, his ears are wind blocked, and he can't hear much else other than the sound of the whistle.
Formston has been a vocal advocate for disability rights. As a child, he experienced a lot of bullying for his blindness - but he said it's the adversity that drove him to work harder and prove people wrong.
"I went through a crazy amount of bullying at school, kids would say, 'How many fingers am I holding up?', they'd throw things at me and I wouldn't know who did it, just psychological bullying, but I was more fearful of being different than I was of being physically hurt, so I was very physical in rugby and ice hockey.
"I could get back at those bullies but also just let out some of my frustration ... as much as my parents gave me the belief anything is possible, I also have to thank those bullies ... they gave me a huge amount of resilience."
Formston said spite was a huge motivator for a long time, but he's settled into more of a vibe of being inquisitive about what's possible when you set your mind to something and work hard.
"If you try hard at whatever you're doing, things will get easier. That was the same at Nazare, it was pretty easy for me to surf that wave to be honest, I never felt out of my depth."
The Blind Sea is currently screening in cinemas around New Zealand.
