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Updated at 8:20 a.m., Tuesday, August 21, 2007

New book chronicles Foo-Bradshaw surfing rivalry

By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON
Associated Press asap

A new book by Andy Martin, "Stealing the Wave," chronicles the complex relationship between two of Hawai'i's best big-wave surfers: Ken Bradshaw and Mark Foo.

The two men started surfing together when Foo "dropped in" on Bradshaw, brazenly stealing a big, beautiful wave that was already spoken for, and riding it gracefully into shore. Bradshaw reacted by biting a chunk out of Foo's board.

On that day a classic sports rivalry was born — the older, bulky Texan against the younger, agile Asian-American. But after a decade on the waves together, turf battles grew into grudging respect.

The two men pushed each other to tackle bigger and bigger waves until 1994, when Foo belly flopped off a 30-foot wave near San Francisco and drowned in the whitewater below. These days, Bradshaw, 54, lives in Hawaii where he shapes and sells boards under the brand Bradshaw-Hawaii.

In Martin's telling, Hawai'i isn't all about "aloha;" it's home to serious competition, where stealing a wave could get you kicked off the beach by territorial locals.

asap visited another surfing hotspot — Huntington Beach, Calif. — to see how the competitive spirit plays out on the waves, and how Foo's legacy lives on. Check it out in this asap video report.

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See the video at: http://asap.ap.org/data/interactives/_sports/surfbattle/

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Raquel Maria Dillon is a reporter in the AP's Los Angeles bureau. Want to comment? Sound off at mailto:soundoffasap@ap.org.