Sad: 16 Year Old Pro Surfer Dies While Surfing During Hurricane Irma
Florida and the Caribbean are bracing to be hit by, what experts are calling, the strongest hurricane ever recorded.
A young pro surfer from Barbados saw the storm as a chance to add to his impressive resume. Unfortunately, what he loved to do ended up being his demise.
Zander Venezia, a native of Barbados, reportedly fell off his board and hit a shallow reef at a beach called Box by Box, it said. He and other surfers were riding a swell generated by the Category Five hurricane on Tuesday.An autopsy revealed that the Olympic surfing hopeful was knocked unconscious by the fall from his board and then drowned.Speaking to the magazine Surfline, pro-turned-surf instructor Alan Burke said that Zander was knocked over by a 'closeout set' - a wave that closes in from both sides - and 'likely hit bottom'.Nathan Florence, who was among the group of pro surfers who had flown into Barbados to surf Irma's swell, was the first to get to him and start performing CPR.'Zander was bleeding, and he wasn't moving. They tried to get him to the beach quickly, which was very difficult,' Burke said. 'Box by Box is a tough place to get in and out of, even if you have the ability. There's lots of big rocks around, and some stick out of the water.'Burke says Venezia's last words were to fellow surfer Dylan Graves, who he spoke to before catching his final fatal wave.'He told Dylan, "I just got the best wave of my life!"' Burke said. 'Dylan was the last person to speak to Zander. Then that next closeout set came through.'He was expected to represent his home country in the 2020 Olympics, the first Olympics to feature surfing as a sport.The Barbados newspaper Nation News called Venezia one of the island's most promising junior surfers. -(Ashley Collman, Daily Mail UK)