Praia do Norte woke at dawn under a cold Atlantic wind, walls of turquoise already stalking the cliff line. By first horn the swell hit thirty-five feet, a size that turns most mortals into spectators—but Justine Dupont thrives where fear begins. Fresh from maternity leave and riding with the calm of someone who has stared down bigger challenges than water, the French charger launched into a near-vertical drop on her opening wave, outrunning a feathering lip that would have buried anyone a heartbeat slower. Judges threw nines. The crowd on the Fort of São Miguel cheered loud enough to drown the jet-skis.
Across three heats Dupont threaded eight scoring rides, each a lesson in composure: high-line drive to set the rail, subtle stall for the barrel, then a precision kick-out into the channel before the foam ball detonated behind her. Her final tally eclipsed every other athlete—men included—earning her the Women’s Best Performance trophy and the loudest ovation of the day. Interviewed on the podium, she smiled beneath her Red Bull beanie: “Motherhood taught me patience. Nazaré rewards patience.”
Beyond the heroics, her victory rewrites the economics of winter in Portugal. Hotel bookings spiked weeks before the Green Alert; livestream numbers smashed last year’s totals; local cafés added early-morning shifts to serve the dawn patrol. Brands already jostling for a patch on her tow-board know what this means: Dupont has become the face of big-wave surfing’s future, proof that power and style are gender-neutral concepts when the canvas is sixty feet tall. As sunset washed the canyon in gold, the Atlantic still roared—but the loudest statement belonged to Justine Dupont, standing tall on a podium built for giants.