Hareb well on road to recovery from terrifying accident in Mexico

Paige Hareb sat in the water with two broken ribs, struggling to breathe. She began drifting towards a heavy shore break at Zippers in San Jose del Cabo in Mexico.

A free-surf in preparation for a major World Surf League Qualifying Series (QS) event took a terrifying turn for the 28-year-old Kiwi when, after catching a wave, she was picked up by the following one and slammed sideways into a boulder.

She got to her board and began to paddle in but realised she was in trouble. Hareb’s friends were surfing out the back of the break and there was only one person around — a local surfer on the beach. She waved her arm to signal for help.

He waved back.

“It was a bit scary there when the Mexican guy was just waving back at me instead of coming out and helping me,” she recalled.

The man finally got the message, paddled out on his board before passing it to the Kiwi in distress and towing her in.

On the shore, a doctor said there was a possibility she might have punctured a lung or her liver — so she was initially refused painkillers, which made for an excruciating ambulance ride to hospital ride over bumpy roads.

Hareb was later found to have broken ribs nine and 10 on her right side, an abrasion on her right lung and some liquid inside it.

As a result, she had to withdraw from the Mexico competition, a smaller one in South Africa the week after and the next Championship Tour (CT) event at Jeffreys Bay in South Africa starting on Friday.

After resting a couple of days while the liquid in her lung subsided, Hareb flew home to Taranaki to begin her recovery. She is working hard to be back in the water for the Supergirl Pro in California — another major QS event — late this month.

She said she was about a week ahead of schedule, and was confident of being back in time for the Supergirl Pro, which was the start of a busy time of year with four events spread across the United States and Spain within two months.

“Missing Mexico, I was pretty gutted. If I miss Supergirl, that’ll be devastating,” Hareb said. “I’m just lucky I got a couple of good results at the start of the year and I’m still sitting in a really good spot.”

It was a bad time of year for Hareb to have picked up a major injury, with the QS looking like it will be vital in her bid to hold on to her spot on the CT.

The Kiwi has not seen things go her way on the CT this year — falling out of all five competitions in the second round.

However, she is in 13th place on the QS leaderboard with 6900 points — having competed in just three events of the series.

With the top six securing automatic qualification spots, Hareb was well in contention, despite missing the event in Mexico.

“Everything’s kind of on track still.”