There are many ways you might know Koa Smith. Hardcore surf fans may have followed his surfing career from his successful junior competitive days. The Kauaian was a three-time National Scholastic Surfing Association National Champion and seen as a future CT star. Whilst an elite-level career beckoned, Smith instead chose the life of a professional “freesurfer” and has been paid to travel the world and surf the dreamiest waves he could find.
His performances at some of the world’s heaviest waves like Pipeline and Jaws in Hawaii and Tahiti’s Teahupo’o have made him one of the most well-known, well-liked, and well-respected surfers in the world.
Others may have first come across Koa after he posted GoPro footage of an incredible 30-second long tube ride at Skeleton Bay in Namibia in 2014. It won Best Barrel at the 2014 Surfer Poll and also the inaugural GoPro of the World contest. It still has a good claim to the best barrel ever recorded.
Away from the surfing world, Smith made a splash in 2015 when he won the prestigious MAN/Ford modeling competition and was then employed as the face of that year’s Alexander Wang campaign. Not long after he took part in the reality TV show The Runner, along with his brother, and successful model, Travis.
With Travis, and his other brother Alex, Koa also runs several coffee and health food shops in Hawaii, California and Japan called Sunrise Shacks. The brothers' documentation of their business, surfing, partying, modeling, international travels, and general awe-inspiring life living on the beach at Pipeline on North Shore of Oahu has amassed millions of fans on social media.
Yet while Koa's positivity and charismatic personality have made him a star, it is his surfing ability that has underpinned all his success. Strip everything else away, and he remains one of the best surfing talents of his generation.