Teahupoʻo (pronounced CHO-PO) is a village on the south-west coast of the island of Tahiti, French Polynesia, southern Pacific Ocean. It is known for the surf break and heavy, glassy waves offshore, often reaching 2 to 3 m (7 to 10 ft) and sometimes up to 20 m (70 ft). It is the site of the annual Billabong Pro Tahiti surf competition, part of the World Championship Tour (WCT) of the Association of Surfing Professionals World Tour surfing circuit and used to be one stop in the World Tour of the International Bodyboarding Association.

Bodyboarding pioneers Mike Stewart and Ben Severson were the first to surf Teahupo'o in 1986 and it soon became an underground spot for thrill-seeking bodyboarders. Few professional surfers rode Teahupo'o during the early 1990s and it was only in 1998, at the Gotcha Tahiti Pro, that Teahupo'o became widely recognized as having some of the heaviest waves in the world. On August 17, 2000 Laird Hamilton is credited with surfing the "heaviest wave" ever ridden, documented in the film Riding Giants. In 2003 the late Malik Joyeux successfully rode one of the largest waves ever ridden.

Laird Hamilton (born March 2, 1964) is an American big-wave surfer, co-inventor of tow-in surfing, and an occasional fashion and action-sports model. He is married to Gabrielle Reece, a professional volleyball player, television personality, and model. Hamilton and his family split their time between residences in Maui, Hawaii, and Malibu, California.

Laird was born Laird John Zerfas in San Francisco on March 2, 1964, in an experimental salt-water sphere at UCSF Medical Center designed to ease the mother's labor. His Greek birth father, L. G. Zerfas, left the family before his first birthday. While he was an infant, Laird and his mother, Joann (née Zyirek), moved to Hawaii. While still a young boy living on Oahu, Laird met with 1960s surfer Bill Hamilton, a bachelor at the time, on Pūpūkea beach on the North Shore. Bill Hamilton was a surfboard shaper and glasser on Oahu in the 1960s and 1970s and owned a small business handmaking custom, high-performance surfboards for the Oahu North Shore big wave riders of the era. The two became immediate companions. The young Laird invited Bill Hamilton home to meet his mother. Bill Hamilton married Laird's then-single mother, becoming Laird's adoptive father.

Maya Gabeira (born April 10, 1987 in Rio de Janeiro) is a professional big wave surfer from Brazil.

In 2009, Gabeira won the ESPY award for Best Female Action Sports Athlete. Later that year, Gabeira surfed the biggest wave ever by a female when she successfully surfed a 45-foot wave at Dungeons, a big wave surf spot in South Africa.

In 2010, she was awarded with the Billabong Girls Best Overall Performance Award for a record four straight years in a row.

Gabeira's current sponsors include Billabong and Red Bull.

Gabeira's father is Fernando Gabeira, one of the founding members of the Green Party of Brazil.

She is currently dating Jesse Spencer.

Robert Kelly Slater (born February 11, 1972, Cocoa Beach, FL, USA) is an American professional surfer known for his competitive prowess and style. He has been crowned ASP World Champion a record 11 times, including 5 consecutive titles from 1994–98. He is the youngest (at age 20) and the oldest (at age 39) to win the title. Upon winning his 5th world title in 1997, Slater passed Australian surfing legend Mark Richards to become the most successful champion in the history of the sport. In 2007 he also became the all-time leader in career event wins by winning the Boost Mobile Pro event at Lower Trestles near San Clemente, California. The previous record was held by Slater's childhood hero, 3-time world champion Tom Curren.

In addition to the ASP tour, Slater has also competed in the X-Games (in 2003 and 2004). After earlier being awarded the title prematurely as a result of a miscalculation by the ASP, on November 6, 2011 Slater officially won his eleventh ASP world title at the Rip Curl Pro Search San Francisco, by winning his 4th round heat. In May 2005, in the final heat of the Billabong Tahiti Pro contest at Teahupo'o, Slater became the first surfer ever to be awarded two perfect scores for a total 20 out of 20 points under the ASP two-wave scoring system. (The corresponding honor under the previous three-wave system belongs to fellow American Shane Beschen who achieved the feat in 1996.) Since 1990, Slater has been sponsored primarily by surfwear industry giant Quiksilver. He exclusively rides Channel Islands surfboards equipped with his own signature series of FCS fins.

Mark Healey (from Ipswich, Suffolk) is a British computer games developer. Healey started his career making games for the Commodore 64 home computer - his first published game was KGB Super Spy for Codemasters which led to developing the Educational Fun School series of games for Europress Software. Healey later Joined Bullfrog Productions to work with Peter Molyneux on titles such as Theme Park, Magic Carpet and Dungeon Keeper. When Molyneux left Bullfrog to form Lionhead Studios, Healey joined him, and worked as a senior artist/designer on the BAFTA award winning Black & White. Whilst still at Lionhead, he developed Rag Doll Kung Fu independently in his spare time, which was the first third party game to be distributed over Steam - Valve Corporation's online distribution system. He is a co-founder and Creative Director of Media Molecule, a computer games studio which published its first videogame, a cooperative platformer for the PlayStation 3 entitled LittleBigPlanet, which has been pioneering in the area of user created content.