Surfing
Surfing
Bruno Hansen: the surfer who refused to die
After a brutal car-jacking left him paralysed, Bruno Hansen wanted to end it all. 20 years on, he’s now the three-time adaptive surfing world champion. Here's how he did it...
As a younger man, Bruno Hansen was famous for the long, sun-bleached blonde locks that reached all the way down his back. As a skipper on yachts transporting surfers around Bali, the hair went with the perpetual tan and roughish good looks to complete the image of the ultimate beach bum.
Bruno, who was born in Zimbabwe in 1971, had made his way out to the surf boats after spells in the South African and Danish navies, and has always been at home on the water, learning to surf as a child on a crocodile-infested lake. But, as the poem goes, nothing gold can stay, and in his 27th year, Bruno was to undergo the toughest experience of his life – an experience that would shape the next two decades.
Having returned to Cape Town for a flying visit, Bruno ended up being driven down a long stretch of highway by a woman he had met in a bar that evening. Cape Town in the ‘90s was no joke, so when a car containing four men pulled up alongside them, Bruno knew they were in trouble.
“I said ‘Just drive. Just drive and get to the next town. Get to people,” he recounts over the phone from Hawaii. Unfortunately, the car-jackers had other ideas. Bruno and his partner came under fire. Their car skidded off the road, and up the embankment. Both Bruno and the woman were alive, but the thieves administered a savage beating to Bruno, causing the car to roll back down the hill, snapping Bruno’s back in the process. The girl was trapped beneath the scalding engines of the car “for hours” Bruno says, while they waited for help to arrive.
Bruno before his accident, working on a yacht
© Bruno Hansen
Bruno and the woman lost contact after they left the hospital. She is now, Bruno tells us, happily married. For his part, Bruno spiralled into a dark chasm of depression following the car-jacking. For five years he considered suicide, experimenting with drink and drugs. One day, he tried to drown himself. But the water would not take him. He was too good a waterman. Day after day Bruno tried to end his life in the ocean, using a borrowed longboard to paddle out to deep water. By accident, he ended up surfing back in to shore and realised, slowly, that he might have found a new calling.
Since then, he has won the Adaptive Surfing World Championships three times, competing against other less-abled surfers. Now – although his hair is shorter – Bruno has once again transformed himself into a gnarly adonis of the sea, full of positivity, determination, and compassion. Here’s what he learned along the way.
1. Fear is not a bad thing
Bruno pictured after one of his buddies threw his wheelchair into the water
© Bruno Hansen
"I didn’t see the ocean until I was 8-years-old. I grew up near Billawayo, working in a fishing business my dad had on a big lake. This thing was huge – like 500km long. It was the biggest expanse of water I knew. It was a wild upbringing. I used to walk to school and have to dodge baboons along the way. There were freedom fighters in the bush. One of my good friends was trampled by an elephant. The first time I surfed, I stood up on a windsurfing board on the lake and surfed a little wave made by the wind. A foamy. A guy shouted to me from the shore, telling me to watch out for crocodiles. There were people getting chomped there all the time. So even though I loved to surf, I grew up with this fear of water."
2. Live recklessly
"I got a scholarship with the South African navy after studying mechanical engineering. I ended up working on navy ships and when I was 19 and ended up going to Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. As a 19-year-old my mind was blown wide open. I took my surfboard on the ship thinking I’d have free time to go surfing. No way. The navy guys laughed at me. When they let Nelson Mandela out, lots of people fled the navy. Everyone was jumping ship. They were scared of what the new government might do. I went AWOL. I knew I needed to go travelling. I wanted to adventure. It was pretty reckless. But now, instead of living recklessly, I’m trying to live with ‘responsible recklessness'."
3. Take life in your stride
"After the car-jacking I woke up in intensive care. The doctor came and said, “Son, I shoot from the hip. You’re paralysed and you’ll never walk again.” He didn’t try to reassure me, or to break it gently. That pissed me off. It still does. Shortly afterwards I was moved to the Salisbury spinal unit in England. I was depressed, but trying to stay positive too. The nurses at the rehabilitation centre knew I’d never walk again, but I told them I would. I was wrong, of course, but I thought “What do these people know, man? I’ll survive this."
I was caught up in the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. A two-metre wave came through and I knew I needed to get out of there. I cut the anchor and gunned the engine out to deep water.
4. Stay humble
Bruno's story embodies the resilience of the human spirit
© Bruno Hansen
"I didn't know anyone else who surfed paralysed. Unbeknownst to me, there’d been a huge adaptive surfing competition in Hawaii for 10 years, called the Duke’s Ocean Fest. I entered it in 2016, and had no expectations. I had no money, no team, no sponsors, not even my own board. But the waves there were small compared to what I’d been surfing in Bali, and I ended up winning it. I haven’t looked back since."
5. Take a new approach
Once an adrenaline junkie, always an adrenaline junkie
© Bruno Hansen
"We live in a physical world, and people focus on that a lot, forgetting that there’s another way to look at life. I went to Brazil to visit a healer – a shaman in the middle of nowhere. He taught me that the triangle of life is the mental, the spiritual and the physical. Keep it all balanced. Don’t just focus on the physical. In my twenties I was very fit and strong. As a young male, you try to work out who you are and where you are, and it makes you think a certain way. You don’t think about the spiritual side – whatever that is; some people have to go to church and pray, some do the snake-dance. For me, it’s connecting with nature. And the mental side is about being clear about what we want to achieve in life."
6. Trust your gut
"I was caught up in the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. I was alone in a boat anchored off the coast of Thailand. The sea at that time of year should be calm, but I woke up that morning and it wasn’t. A two-metre wave came through and I knew I needed to get out of there. I cut the anchor and gunned the engine out to deep water. The tsunami consisted of a set of four waves, the first was two-metres, then it kept rising —four-metres, six-metres, ten-metres — the final wave was a mountain of water. A lot of other boats in the bay didn’t do that, and were still there when the tsunami hit. They didn’t make it."
7. Don’t take life too seriously
"You can’t be obsessed with outcomes. I’ve learned to have a very clear mind about what I’m doing and where I’m going. Once I make a decision I stay with it. I always plan something and I’m always ready for the decision I’ve made. No matter the outcome, I’m ready for it. It puts me in the best place of being able to deal with any situation. I’ve been in radical storms on a sail boat and you have to learn to make decisions.
8. Ask yourself what you want from life
"People forget what life is about. They get stuck in a loop of mundane nonsense. What I want from life is passion, joy and excitement. I like meeting smart, curious people. I’ve realised that the years slip by very quickly. I’ve nearly been in a wheelchair as long as I’ve been out of a wheelchair. Everything ages – wine, fruit, but there are people that get old, and people that age. I’ve chosen to be a person that just ages, and I think it’s by staying curious."
