Australian paddleboarder Charlie Verco won his fourth world championship in Hawaii on Sunday, setting a new record time in the Molokai to Oahu Paddleboard race just weeks after rescuing a woman from a great white shark attack.
Record-breaking performance
The 25-year-old completed the gruelling 52km ocean crossing in 4 hours, 18 minutes and 3 seconds, beating the previous record set by fellow Australian Matt Bevilacqua in 2019 by three minutes. Verco finished nearly 50 minutes ahead of the second-place competitor in the unlimited paddleboard class, widely considered the ultimate test in open-water paddling.
“I’m so stoked,” Verco said after the race. “It’s always a challenge getting across the channel and each year it dishes up something different.”
Shark rescue in June
In June, while training off Coogee beach in Sydney, Verco heard cries for help from Leah Stewart, a 34-year-old teacher who had been bitten by a great white shark. Verco, a trained surf life saver, paddled her to shore as she lost consciousness. Stewart survived after five surgeries, including an arm amputation.
“The shark surfaced, I saw its dorsal fin – it was big, about 3.5 metres,” Verco told Guardian Australia. “I’ve only ever seen one shark bigger than that, and that was a tiger shark in Hawaii.”
Verco described how Stewart disappeared and then reappeared, and he helped her grab hold of his board while paddling with one hand. “I had to try and keep hold of her with one hand and keep paddling towards shore with the other.”
Race strategy and mindset
The 27th running of the Molokai race was more straightforward for Verco. He said he focused on having fun rather than chasing time, a lesson learned from last year when he finished over 40 minutes outside the record. “Last year I got a bit ahead of myself and started chasing time … This year my goal was just to have fun with it.”
Verco, a North Bondi resident, described his race strategy: “Today for the first three hours I just caught the bumps I felt like catching … I got to three hours and the bumps started picking up again. I was like, ‘Dad, should I see what I can do?’ and Dad couldn’t hear me because he’s deaf, but George [his brother] said, ‘hell yeah let’s do it’.”
