Twiggy Baker and Greg Long the standouts as Billabong launches 2008/9 XXL Global Big Wave website

Awe inspiring images and video footage of South Africa’s Grant ‘Twiggy’ Baker and Californian Greg Long riding enormous waves off the Cape Peninsula are the amongst the highlights on the recently launched 2008/9 website for the ninth annual Billabong XXL Global Big Wave Awards presented by Monster Energy.

With the Northern Hemisphere winter just beginning and the weather systems starting to produce giant surf, most of the early contenders for the Ride of the Year, Biggest Wave, Monster Paddle-in and Monster Tube awards are from the big wave playgrounds of the Southern Hemisphere, including South Africa, Western Australia, Tasmania and Tahiti.

Baker and Long, who operate as a tow-in team when not paddling into the world’s biggest surf, have been nominated in various categories. Baker’s ride at Tafelberg Reef near Hout Bay, which he was towed into by Long and photographed by Cape Town’s Brenton Geach and Alan van Gysen, is arguably the biggest wave ever surfed off the coast of Africa.

Long’s incredible tube ride on a massive wave at Dungeons, captured on video during the Red Bull Big Wave Africa event in July, is an undoubted frontrunner in the Ride of the Year stakes while Baker and Cape Town’s James Taylor share another humungous wall of water in the same event that qualifies for the Paddle-in award.

The annual Billabong XXL awards honour the planet’s top performers in giant surf and run from April 2008 until the Equinox on March 20, 2009, with a glittering awards ceremony held in California in the second week of April.

In addition to all the latest entries in each category, full event details including formats, rules and archives of past XXL years can be seen at the event website at www.BillabongXXL.com.