Nic von Rupp grew up in Praia Grande, a town near Lisbon in Portugal. Now he lives in Sintra, a Unesco World Heritage Site outside the capital, but he spends much of his time when in his home country at the beach in Nazaré, the location of the world’s biggest surfable wave. Von Rupp has surfed Nazaré for several years and in 2022 won Best Team Performance at the Tudor Nazaré Tow Surfing Challenge along with Brazil’s Lucas Chianca. Today, he is in a team with Frenchman Clément Roseyro called Mountains of the Sea, sponsored by Tudor, the Swiss watch company. Consequently, his preferred timepiece is a Tudor Pelagos diving watch, which he wears all the time, both on and off the surfboard. Together, von Rupp and Roseyro won Best Team Performance in 2025 at the Tudor Nazaré Big Wave Challenge competition. A surfer since he was nine years old and a multiple national surf competition award winner in Portugal in his teens, von Rupp established himself on the sport’s world circuit before pivoting to big waves. Here he tells us about his love for Nazaré and Lisbon, and what makes this part of the world a surfer’s paradise.
In the last couple of years there’s been this crazy development at Nazaré in Portugal. A lot of it has to do with the 100 Foot Wave documentary series; there’s more and more people coming here to see the waves. As kids we used to go to Hawaii to get little bits and pieces of big wave experience, that’s how I grew up. But now the whole thing has changed, it’s like the whole world’s coming to Portugal. It used to be Hawaii or Brazil, but here we get the most consistent waves. And the largest. Nazaré has the biggest wave in the world you can surf, so it’s the wave that gets the most attention. I’m from here, I grew up in Portugal, so I saw the whole development of Nazaré – I was actually part of the development.
Now I’ve created this project called Mountains of the Sea. When you look at a wave, it looks like a mountain. But what’s interesting here is, these mountains are over the sea, but there’s also mountains under the sea. What you need for a big wave to break is very deep water into very shallow water. There are canyons underwater, and Nazaré has one that runs to the shore for some 230 kilometres that funnels the water in. This spits out a peak just before the beach.
But there might be a wave breaking, just like at Nazaré, somewhere else in the world that no one has ever seen, or no one has ever surfed. So, my team and I are exploring uncharted locations looking for this. We’ve been to the Arctic and to Iceland and later this year we’re going to Greenland. There has to be something else out there – I mean look at the globe. All the places we’re surfing these days are quite accessible. So, you start thinking, what else might there be?
In the meantime, I’ll surf Nazaré, which has the perfect conditions to create this enormous wave. And though many, many people come here now and walk down that cliff to watch, the experience is always awesome. Whether you are a surfer or not, to see such a raw expression of nature – waves close to 100 feet, breaking at a very close distance to you – it’s just insane.
Obviously not everyone can surf those conditions, but Portugal is a paradise for surfing. Because the conditions are guaranteed – I think the Portuguese tourism board even ran a campaign a couple years ago targeting surfers where they said if you don’t get waves, we’ll refund your trip!
There are so many really cool surf towns here these days. Peniche is one of them; and Ericeira. But even Lisbon is a surf destination. I think it’s the only capital city in the world surrounded by ocean and surfable waves. I can’t think of anywhere else you can really have that cosmopolitan lifestyle of culture, good food, art, music, but you also have the coast right there. You have Carcavelos, Praia do Sol, Bafureira, these are all world-class surf spots. Lisbon is incredible. Lisbon is a surf town. You can surf every day.
@nicvonrupp; @mountainsofthesea; vonfroth.com; tudorwatch.com
