Australia’s all-star surfing Wright family, including siblings Tyler, Mikey, and Owen, are well regarded throughout the world for their incredible feats on the surfboard.
But Tyler and Mikey just added a new level to their fame with a dramatic lifesaving rescue of a woman desperately struggling in rough surf at Ke Iki beach on Oahu in Hawaii.
In a video that has now gone viral, the woman is seen trying to get safely to shore as she was buffeted by huge waves and surrounded by rocky outcrops.
“He’s gonna need to get saved,” Mikey, who was filming, said – before he handed off his phone and sprinted to help the woman.
“You can’t save him,” yelled a woman nearby.
Mikey launched himself into the water and managed to navigate a rocky ledge to reach the woman, shielding her with his body as waves barrelled into the pair again and again.
Once he was close to shore, Tyler and other bystanders helped complete the daring rescue by dragging them away from the water.
“Then I realised it was getting pretty dangerous so I gave my wife my phone and said ‘let’s go get her’,” he said.
“She was trying to come in (over the rocks) and I said ‘we have to go down the beach’.
“We ended up grabbing a hold of her and going down with the current. I just said to her ‘don’t let go and hold on’.”
Despite putting himself in between the woman and the rocky ledge, Mikey said he had avoided serious injury.
“I put my body on the line as a pillow to the rocks and tried to keep her on top of me,” Mikey said.
“At the end of the day she is safe and I only have a few scratches on my back.”
Two-time world champion Tyler wrote on Instagram: “Closing out 2020 with some hero s**t by @mikeywright69.”
Mikey shared the video himself with the caption “Hold my beer”.
Plenty of fellow surfers and fans flooded the pair with praise for their actions. Mick Fanning wrote: “Wow that could of ended really bad!! Well done.”
Jessi Miley-Dyer wrote: “What a bloke!!! Wish we had the footage of him scaling the fence. Her lucky day”.