Felipe Pomar is remembered as the first great international surfer from Peru. But when Pomar first came on the scene it was as the regularfoot half of two-man team, alongside fellow Club Waikiki member and red-hot goofyfooter Joaquin Miro Quesada—"Shigi" to friends and family. Of the surfers, Shigi probably had the greater gift. He was quicker and more limber, and better in the small stuff. Surfing was a sport for grownups in Peru in 1960, and Felipe and Shigi were the youngest board-toting 

I learned to surf at Club Waikiki, and that's where I met Joaquin, who was about my age. We were the two young up-and-coming guys who also loved big waves, and we were the first club members to surf through the cold Lima winter—before wetsuits. When summer ended, the other surfers quit until the following summer. Joaquin and I were still out there, right through winter, without wetsuits. We'd run up and down the stairs to get hot and sweaty so we could last in the cold water as long as possible. I remember being out there, cold and blue, and Joaquin would say, ‘Imagine you’re in the Sahara, dying of heat.’ Riding waves all year, and doing all that exercise, kept us in excellent shape. Joaquin won many contests, and became national champion.

As high schoolers, Pomar and Quesada talked often about traveling to Hawaii. After graduation, however, it was Felipe who made the big move to Oahu, in 1963, while Shigi flew off to Mainland America and studied photojournalism at a college in Tennessee. Two years later, back in Peru, Shigi was the first person to surf the deep-water heavies at Pico Alto, while Felipe returned to Lima to win the 1965 World Surfing Championships. The Barreda brothers and Ivo Hunza were among the hot next-generation Peruvian surfers, but Felipe and Shigi were on top, make no mistake, and 1966 found them both on the North Shore, fired up and bombing into anything that came their way, the bigger the better. Shigi, no surprise, developed a taste for Pipeline. Dialed it quickly, too, and by early '67 was just a notch or so below Jock Sutherland and Jackie Eberle, the two fastest guns out there. Yellow board, red trunks, stylish deep crouch in the hook—you couldn't miss Shigi.

March 5, 1967. Pipeline, eight-foot and crossed up. Quesada pulled in and didn't come out. Hit the reef, broke his neck, was pulled from the water by Butch Van Artsdalen, and died a few hours later—Pipeline's first headline-making fatality. He was 22.

 magazine ran a memorial a few weeks later that was somehow both lurid and touching. The notice began by describing Quesada as "a close and dear friend to surfers around the world," then it turned sharply into the metaphorical deep grass:

For those who devote their lives to auto racing, when their number is up, do they wish to die in bed slowly, succumbing to the numbing effects of lung cancer? Or at that last moment of life, would they rather miss that big turn at 80 MPH and plunge headfirst into a flaming death? It's too late now to ask Shigi how, when or where. But to a man dedicated to the frothy, foaming sea, if the end had to come so early in life, a quick death in a never-ending at the Pipeline might be just the answer.

Apart from the flaming death and lung cancer, it's a nice sentiment.

Unless you're from Peru and over 50 years old, you've probably never seen a photo of Quesada. I found most of the images here in a book on Peruvian surf history called 

, by the great Magoo de la Rosa. The photos are uncredited, but were likely by Jose de Lavelle. The Pipeline image is by Val Valentine.

La juventud es intoxicación sin vino; vejez, vino sin intoxicación.

Youth is intoxication without wine; old age, wine without intoxication.

REMEMBERING JOAQUIN "SHIGI" MIRO QUESADA

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