A few weeks ago Koa Rothman was out surfing at an undisclosed spot when a ditched gun made it’s way over the falls and smashed him straight in the face.
The result was a concussion, a tweaked neck, a hurt knee and a bunch of broken teeth which he subsequently swallowed.
“This place was just amazing. It was the smallest town and the people were great.” he explained to Surfline in an interview about the incident. “We went to this wave, a big bombie, and we scored. It was like a mini Jaws — a mellow takeoff to a perfect, V-Land barrel. It was more consistently barreling and easier to get barreled than Jaws, actually.” After several hours out there, Koa was knackered and decided to get one final one and head in.
“I finally got this wave and pulled in backside,” he says. “And that was probably the most barreled I’ve ever been on my 9’0” — it was like an eight- to ten-foot wave. And I’m in the barrel, and all of a sudden I saw this like flash of red — it was this guy’s board. I put my head down a little bit, ‘cause it was coming straight to my face and it just cleaned me out on the side of my head. And as soon as that happened, my teeth like shattered together on top of each other. Broken in half. And as soon as that happened, I hit the water and swallowed my teeth. I was like, ‘oh f++k….It was pretty traumatic. Worst wipeout surfing for sure. It was like a car accident.”
“I went to the shittiest hospital and this dentist to see if I could fly, because one of the nerves on my teeth was completely hanging out. It was a little bit of a nightmare for three days — like, I could tell everyone I talked to at the airport were looking at my teeth. I looked like some crack head or something. And I was talking with a lisp. But it’s all good now.”
And what of the teeth? If WebMD is to be believed they will have passed safely through Koa’s system by now, replaced, in his mouth, by a couple of brand new pearly white veneers.
Cover shot courtesy of Quiksilver
