The sports and mythology of the Hawaiians are similar to those of the ancient Greeks. They also loved to organize festivals in honor of the gods and hold a kind of “Olympic Games”.
The ancient Hawaiian sports of surfing and canoeing flourish on the coast and delight tourists.
In the old days, surfers (Hawaiian: He’e nalu) could only be chiefs, for whom large wooden boards were carved from the endemic willow tree Maua (Latin: Xilosma hawaiiense, Hawaiian: Maua). It is distinguished by its light wood and red young leaves. At the beginning of the last century, the writer Jack London joined this “royal sport”. He wrote that these heroes tamed the furious waves and rushed to the shore on their ridges, rising from the seething foam, like sea gods.
Now this sport has become less elitist, it has even recently been introduced into the Hawaiian school curriculum. The broadcast of giant winter wave competitions captivates TV viewers around the world. It is especially impressive when athletes ride a wave inside a tube that is formed by a crashing wave.
Sometimes winter storms and winds blowing at 150 km/h (95 mph) bring huge waves to the north of Oahu. This is the season of extreme surfing, Ken Bradshaw is famous for taming a record 26-meter wave, to which he was towed by a jet ski.