When Ol’ Blue Eyes shot TheGreatestattheGarden
The world record is held by an American, Garrett McNamara.
Off the coast of Nazare, in Portugal, in 2013, he surfed on a wave estimated to be 100ft high.
He is also the first surfer to ride tsunami waves, caused when a glacier calves, that is, when a large chunk of ice falls off and into the sea.
The mass of ice can produce 25-ft waves, and rides of 300 yards or more, lasting for more than a minute can be achieved.
Daredevil Garrett claims he is afraid of some things, including sky diving . . . and horses! IS it true that Frank Sinatra once posed as a photographer to get a ringside seat to see a Muhammad Ali fight? – D.
March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden in New York, Ali met Joe Frazier in what was described as “The fight of the century”.
Both men were undefeated and meeting for the first time in the world heavyweight title-unification fight.
Sinatra, or Ol’ Blue Eyes as he was known, had announced his retirement from singing and recording the previous summer and was at a loose end, searching around for something to do with his life.
He had become a keen photographer, which had been noted by Ralph Graves, managing editor of Life magazine.
Graves knew Sinatra would be ringside with his camera, and asked his staff photographer to get the singer to let him see the shots he took.
The magazine eventually used four of the singer’s images with an article written by Norman Mailer.
Sinatra wasn’t the only celebrity there that evening, as Miles Davis, Woody Allen and Burt Lancaster were also ringside. None had cameras with them, although Lancaster was commentating a closed circuit broadcast of the fight.
Frazier won with a unanimous points decision after 15 rounds.
They fought twice more. Ali won on on points in a non-title bout in 1973.
In the third fight, in 1975, Ali won what became known as “The thrilla in Manila” when Frazier’s second stopped the fight after 14 rounds.