The Sunday Times November 28, 2021 17
NEWS
like that on the board, it almost feels like
you’re on a mountain,” he said. “It feels
amazing, especially when you come off
the wave. You’ve made it. You’ve not
wiped out. It’s an incredible feeling. I’ve
surfed other big waves but last week was
the pinnacle.”
His first taste of surfing was as a tod-
dler on the end of his father Marti’s
board. At 12 he became Scottish
under-18 surfing champion and took
part in the world junior championship
in Japan. At 14, he was surfing the noto-
rious 30-foot waves of Mullaghmore, off
the Atlantic coast of Ireland.
Next year, his story will be told in cin-
emas, with the release of a documen-
tary following his prodigious rise over
four years as he prepares for a career as
a professional. Ride The Wave will be
shown at the Glasgow Film Festival inMarch, before going on general release.
It did not come easy. His family took
him out of school after he was a victim of
vicious bullying aged 12.
“I didn’t get on very well at school,”
he said. “So I left at 12 and started home
schooling. I just thought, ‘I didn’t need
to do this. I’d rather just surf and do
some home schooling.’”
He now mixes with some of the
sport’s best-known names in between
running a mobile pizza service on Tiree
and logging on for lessons with the
online school King’s InterHigh.
He was invited to Portugal by the pro-
fessional surfer Nic von Rupp, who he
met when von Rupp was filming for his
YouTube series on the west coast of
Scotland. “I took him out surfing at
Tiree and he returned the favour by ask-
ing us to come out to Nazaré,” said Larg.Paul English “It was amazing, I got loads of great
waves. Not as good as the pro guys, but I
was happy to get a few of the good ones
— around 40ft. But the next time I go out
there I’d hope I’d do a bit better.”
The waves at Nazaré, on Portugal’s
Costa de Prata, often hit 65ft, some-
times 100ft. In 2017, the Brazilian surfer
Rodrigo Koxa set a new world record
when he rode a wave measuring 80ft.
“Everybody said the water was freez-
ing but I thought it was roasting,” said
Larg, who is undaunted by tempera-
tures of 8C in the water off Tiree, albeit
in a 6mm-thick neoprene wetsuit. “I was
the only one who didn’t have any wet-
suit boots on.”
His parents run a water sports busi-
ness from a beach hut on Tiree, an idyl-
lic island with windswept white sands
and a 36-mile coast famed for its excel-lent surf conditions.
“I love Tiree,” he said. “The waves
might only be 10 to 12ft but it’s my
favourite place to surf.”
His parents travel to support him
when he’s riding in foreign waters. His
mother, Iona, said: “I feel delighted for
Ben to be surfing these waves and doing
something that he loves to that stan-
dard. If your kids have anything that
they love, then you’re really happy for
them. Sometimes I just lie down and
look at the sky because I can’t watch it.
He’ll tell me not to speak to him before
he surfs because he says I’ll say the
wrong thing.
“There are obviously risks involved
and I do sometimes wonder how we got
involved in all this. I sometimes think it
might be nice if the thing he loved was
playing the piano.”THE BIG BLUE
14ft
Routemaster
bus height40ft
Wave heightLet’s drink
to end of
the wine
balloon
It is bad news for those who
like to boast they had “only”
one glass of wine but still
drank half a bottle because
the glass was bigger than a
goldfish bowl. The small wine
glass is back in fashion.
Britons are seeking out
small goblets, seemingly to
reduce alcohol intake for
their health and wellbeing. Or
perhaps they just want to be
able to fit the glasses more
easily into their dishwasher.
Pubs are also returning to
more modest measures:
many now offer 125ml as their
standard serving rather than
the typical 175ml, and some
have removed 250ml servings
altogether.
Sales of small wine glasses
and goblets have risen 13 per
cent in the past 12 months,
according to John Lewis. It
defines small glasses as 250ml
or less. Debrett’s, the
authority on etiquette,
dictates that a wine glass
should be filled to its widest
part, so typically between a
third and half full.
The average size of a wine
glass had increased sixfold
from 70ml in 1700 to 450ml
in 2017, according to a report
published in the BMJ. It rose
sharply from 180ml in 1950 to
300ml in 2000 as wine
became more affordable.
A report by Cambridge
University found that people
tended to drink more when
served wine in larger glasses
in restaurants. The report’s
senior author, Professor
Dame Theresa Marteau, said
this was particularly likely if
people were pouring their
own wine.
Marteau, director of the
behaviour and health
research unit at Cambridge, is
now conducting a study on
the effects of removing 250ml
servings of wine from pubs.
@Louise_EcclesLouise Eccles
Consumer Affairs EditorThe monster waves off Nazaré in Portugal can reach up to 100ft. Ben Larg, right, called it an incredible adrenaline rush: “It almost feels like you are on a mountain”Boy leaves school bullies
behind to surf 40ft giant
A 16-year-old from a Scottish island has joined the pros in Portugal. What’s wrong with the piano, asks his mother
EURICO DAVIDAt perhaps his lowest point, Ben Larg
was being so badly bullied he had to be
taken out of his school on the tiny
Hebridean island of Tiree. Four years
on, and still only 16 years old, he has
reached the top of one of the world’s
highest waves, in Nazaré, Portugal,
among the youngest surfers to get there.
Surfers travel from around the world
to risk those waves; many have grown
up in the waters of Australia, Hawaii and
California where the sport has been
mainstream for decades. Larg grew up
on a dot in the Atlantic Ocean, off the
west coast of Scotland, one of a popula-
tion of 650 people.
The wave he took last week was about
40ft. “It’s such an adrenaline rush when
you’re going down the face of a big wave