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Sleepy-eyed Australian big-wave rider from Avoca, New South Wales; winner of the 2001 Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau contest at Waimea Bay. Clarke-Jones was born in Sydney on June 6, 1966 (or 6/6/66, as surf journalist Derek Rielly gleefully pointed out in a

 magazine profile titled "The Devil's Playground"), and began surfing at age 10. He finished third in the men's division of the 1986 World Amateur Surfing Championships, and three months later, as a pro tour rookie competing in the Billabong Pro at Waimea Bay, he casually dropped into a half-dozen 20-foot waves on a 7' 10" surfboard—the smallest board in the event by more than a foot.

While Clarke-Jones went as high as #24 on the world rankings (in 1989), his reputation was made as a perpetually adrenalized thrillseeker who never seemed to be more than a few months removed from a near-death experience. On his third visit to Hawaii, in 1987, he broke his ribs and was unconscious underwater after being hit by a loose board. He nearly drowned in Sumatra in 1992, and six months later was driven tailbone first into the reef at Hawaii's Off the Wall, cracking four vertebra and temporarily losing feeling in his legs. In 1998, he and tow-in partner Tony Ray were rolled by a 30-footer at Outside Log Cabins, also in Hawaii, and along with their flooded jetski drifted four miles west through enormous seas, before getting picked up outside of Haleiwa Harbor. "His wipeouts," surf journalist Jamie Brisick noted, "are right up there with Evel Kneivel's."

Clarke-Jones competed in nearly every big-wave event held from the late '80s to the early 2000s (finishing seventh in the 1990 Aikau contest at Waimea, and third in the 1999 Quiksilver Men Who Ride Mountains event at Maverick's), and was 34 years old when he picked up the $50,000 winner's check for the 2001 Quiksilver-Eddie. The following year, he finished fifth in the Quiksilver.

Clarke-Jones has been featured in more than two dozen surf movies and videos, including 

The Sixth Element: The Ross Clarke-Jones Story

, narrated by actor Dennis Hopper, came out in 2004. From 2008 to 2012, Clarke-Jones co-starred along with Tom Carroll in 

, a big-wave surfing reality-documentary on the Discovery Channel. 

 was released in 2012; one year later, Clarke-Jones had a small roll in 

In 2012, Clarke-Jones was inducted to the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame.

Clarke-Jones, Ross

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Interviews

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