‘I feel like I’m ready’: blind surfer chases world’s biggest wave at Nazaré

This week, some of the world’s best big wave surfers are in Nazaré, Portugal, home to the biggest wave on the planet. An early season winter swell is pulsing into the underwater canyon off the Portuguese coast, with giant 8-9-metre (20-30ft) waves rising out of the ocean. They might not be the world-record breaking 26m (86ft) monster wave ridden there two years ago, but they’re not small either.

Among the surfers is 44-year-old Matt Formston. Like his counterparts, the Sydney-born surfer has been in the water for decades, winning national and international titles and riding some of the best waves in the world. But unlike his counterparts, Formston is blind; at Nazaré, he is becoming the first blind surfer to ride such big waves.

“I’ve been training my whole life towards this moment, even if I didn’t know it,” Formston tells Guardian Australia. “I’ve been surfing bigger and bigger waves and now I feel like I’m ready.”

Formston has never been one to fear the ocean and says chasing Nazaré is a natural progression. “I don’t remember there ever being a time when I didn’t go out because it was too big,” he says. “I’ve surfed the biggest swells to have hit the east coast of Australia every year for the past five years. But I know they will pale in comparison to what we’ve looking at in Portugal.”

He’s heading into the unknown, but carries an air of calmness. “I’ve felt nervous, scared, honoured – all those emotions,” he says. “And now I’m just excited. Not in a reckless way, I’m respectful of the danger and power of the wave. But I feel going into it with fear and hesitation is going to cause more risk than going into it with confidence.”

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Formston grew up in Narrabeen on Sydney’s northern beaches, a surfing mecca. “Damien Hardman, a world champion, lived on my street,” he says. “I caught the bus to school with Nathan Hedge who went on to become one of the best world tour surfers Australia has produced. Surfing was all around me. My mates all surfed and wanted to be pro-surfers, but I had a disability so that didn’t seem a possibility.”

As a young child, Formston was diagnosed with macular dystrophy. For most of his life he has had no central vision, and only 5% peripheral vision in his right eye and 3% in his left eye (both recently deteriorated further). But living in a community of surfers, a lack of sight was not going to stop Formston.

“My dad pushed me into waves when I was five and I learned to feel the wave, paddling out the back by sound and feel,” he says. “And then when I was 10 I stood up.” His first-wave was not a success. “I went straight down the face [of the wave], nose-dived and snapped my brother’s board.” But he has been hooked ever since. “It’s like walking – I’ve been surfing for 30 years.”

Related: ‘Three times the size of our house’: watching surfers ride Portugal’s monster waves

Formston has always been pushing the boundaries for blind surfing. He has won four world championships and a handful of national titles. He also represented Australia in para-cycling at the 2016 Paralympics, having won a tandem pursuit world title two years earlier. “The transition for me was learning how to turn [on the wave],” he says. “Everyone was telling me to turn – but I’d always put too much weight on my back foot, I’d do a big turn but I wouldn’t complete it and continue along on the wave.

“Being able to do high-performance maneuverers now – that took the longest time, to trust being able to put weight back on my front-foot. Initially I was just trying to pull into barrels, I just tried to get barrelled for 20 years. Then I started doing turns about 10 years ago.”

For those without a visual impairment, it is difficult to understand how anyone could surf without sight. But Formston compares it to surfing at dusk. “Most surfers will stay out after dark if it’s pumping,” he says. Formston recently paddled out with Australian surf great Layne Beachley, who tried surfing with goggles that simulate vision impairment. “She spoke about this feeling of lift, this feeling of floating,” he says. “It’s the same for me – basically my front foot is my cane.”

Formston says his blindness can even offer an advantage in the water. “I surf a wave based on what I’m feeling, whereas I think a lot of sighted people predetermine what they’re going to do on the wave. They’ll see a section and do something even if it’s not the right thing to do. I’m just feeling it as I go – I’m completely connected with the ocean, I’m in flow all the time, because I have to be. That itself is a beautiful thing.”

Formston usually surfs with a spotter, particularly when the swell is larger, who helps him with positioning and knowing when to paddle for a wave. But even with a spotter, Formston tries to focus on the ocean. “Different waves have different audible and feel cues,” he says. “Sometimes I can be more in tune with the best spot to sit on the bank – I’m in tune with the little things.”

He admits it’s not a fool-proof strategy. “Most of the time I’m not in the right spot and I’ve caught more close-outs than Kelly Slater,” he laughs. “But that’s part-and-parcel of being a blind surfer. You either get out there and give it a crack or sit in your room and don’t do it.”

If anything, Formston says he finds surfing easier than navigating a world not designed with visual impairment in mind. “If I go to a local shopping centre, to get out of the car and to the shops – there are poles, steps, potentially something on the ground, I might roll my ankle,” he says. “There are just hazards everywhere I can’t see – it’s stressful, my mind has to be working overtime not to hurt myself or hurt someone else. In the ocean there’s none of that.”

Formston was recently surfing a shallow reef break in Indonesia – a dicey proposition even for advanced surfers. “It feels safer for me surfing shallow barrelling waves than it does walking into Woolies,” he says.

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Paralympian, world champion in two different sports, disability advocate, keynote speaker, corporate coach – there isn’t much Formston has not done. Traditionally when he puts his mind to it, he succeeds. There’s no reason to think Nazaré will be any different. His detour into para-cycling is one example – in the early 2010s, there was no blind surfing world championships. Formston was working as a motivational speaker and felt, he says, “like a phoney” – everyone else had “that book cover, Olympian, Paralympian, world champion – whatever – that’s what I wanted. I literally became a cyclist for that reason.”

Formston always intended to retire from cycling after the Rio Paralympics, and the emergence of competitive blind surfing made it an easy choice. “That dream from when I was a little kid in Narrabeen, that I thought would never come true, of me being a pro surfer. Everyone wanted to be a pro surfer and I thought it wasn’t possible because I had a disability. Now I have more sponsors than anyone I know.”

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Beyond Nazaré, Formston has his eye on a return to the Paralympics. The sport of surfing made its debut at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics; there has been a push for blind surfing to join the Paralympics in 2028 in Los Angeles. “My dream would be to retire as an athlete after the Brisbane 2032 Games,” he says. “By the time Brisbane comes around my kids will be 18 – I could potentially have my son as my spotter, which would be a pretty special moment.”

But first, chasing the biggest wave in the world. Over the weekend, Formston successfully caught his first waves at Nazaré. Bigger swell is expected in the days ahead. “I feel a bit of responsibility,” he says. “I hope it helps other people, motivates other people – if I can surf Nazaré, it shows that anything is possible for people with disability.”

Formston has been putting in the work, including strength training and breathing preparation – he can hold his breathe for five minutes. “I’ve built all the capacities I need to do this,” he says. “I’m still blind – but everything else is up there at a world class level. So why wouldn’t I give it a crack?”

Formston’s journey will be featured in a film, The Blind Sea, out next year.