Mike Parsons

Mike Parsons (born March 13, 1965, in California) is an American professional surfer and surfing coach.

Early life Parsons was raised in Laguna Beach, California and began surfing when he was six-years-old. A usually uncredited clip of this sequence has gone on to become a viral video.

Parsons later broke his record on January 5, 2008, at Cortes Bank, when he was photographed surfing a wave that the Billabong XXL judged to be 77 feet, which put him in the Guinness Book of World Records, officially, for biggest wave ever surfed. Nearly 4 years later Garrett McNamara improved on this record with a 78-foot wave off Nazaré, Portugal on November 1, 2011.

In 2011, Parsons became the full-time coach for surfer Kolohe Andino.

On January 20, 2013, Parsons suffered a broken C7 vertebra in his neck and nearly drowned while surfing triple-overhead surf at Ocean Beach, a beach break in San Francisco, California. Parsons was able to return to surfing four months later.

Honors Parsons was inducted into the Surfer's Hall of Fame in Huntington Beach, California in 2008.

Filmography Shock Waves (1987) Overdrive (1993) 100-Foot Wednesday (1998) Step Into Liquid (2003)