Bethany Hamilton

Born in 1990 in Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii, Bethany, like many girls in Hawaii, began surfing at an early age. But right from the start, Bethany was a natural talent. She began competing at the age of 8, and before she was 10, she’d received corporate sponsorship. After that, the girl was unstoppable. Before she was even a teenager, she was winning competitions against much more experienced competitors.

One would think that is her success story right there. After all, although she spent hours practicing, she was succeeding from a young age. What could go wrong at this point?

Her problems came from the last place she expected – from just below the surface of the very ocean she loved so much. At the age of 13, while Bethan was lying on her surfboard, her left arm dangling in the water, a tiger shark came up and took her left arm just below the shoulder. Her life had changed in an instant. The people she was with towed her to shore where her father improvised a tourniquet and rushed her to the closest medical facility. By the time she arrived, she’d lost over 60% of her blood.

When news of this attack broke out, a fisherman showed pictures to investigators of a shark he'd caught and killed a mile from the attack site. He said the shark had surfboard shards in its mouth. The fact that he had captured and killed the shark responsible for the attack was later confirmed.

Bethany spent some weeks in the hospital. By the time she came home, she was impatient. As soon as she was allowed to go, Bethany was back on the water, teaching herself to surf one-armed. There was no way something so small as a shark was going to take from her the very thing she loved best.

At first, she needed a thicker, longer board, but Bethany was soon competing again with standard short, lightweight boards. She came in first place at the NSSA National in Australia and came in first again the next year in the US.

Bethany’s story is far from over. Since then she has grown up and married. Now she has a boy of her own, but she is still competing all over the world.

Losing an arm to the teeth of a shark would convince most people to stay out of the water entirely, but Bethany’s passion and drive overshadowed her experience. She didn’t give up on her passion. Hers is a story of someone who had early success, lost it, and then had to start over again against impossible odds. What is impressive, is that she found a way not only to take back her passion but her championship status all over again. Bethany Hamilton never gave up – even when it would have been easier to do just that. How inspiring is that?

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