EXCLUSIVE: How world record big wave surfer Laura Enever learnt to trust herself by conquering waves three storeys high

How long could you hold your breath if your life depended on it?

For Australian big-wave surfer Laura Enever, this is about three and a half minutes.

"When I'm at my best," she tells Wide World of Sports.

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"Like any form of fitness, holding your breath takes practice.

"My breath-hold training gives me the most confidence that if ever become stuck on the inside of huge waves that have taken me out, I can hold my breath and make it through the sets."

Conquering monstrous waves of water takes strength and skill, but to survive the dangers underwater, big-wave surfers need to remain calm even when everything comes crashing down around them.

"It's all mindset," Enever says. "And going to this place underwater where you're protecting your whole body and trying to stay compact but also letting [the waves] take you and throw you around.

"It's such an intense feeling."

Travelling the world to pursue waves the size of three-story buildings, Enever acknowledges that her passion for riding the biggest, heaviest waves "sounds crazy".

"It almost has a spiritual effect," she says.

"When you're out there and it's just you and your board, and you have to position yourself in a lineup with huge waves rolling towards you and they're coming so fast — they've been generated from a storm thousands of miles away — and you have to be in the right spot at the right time.

"Some days you can sit out in the water for more than six hours trying to catch one of these waves and some days you go home with no waves at all.

"So, when you finally catch one — one that you could have worked your whole life for — it's just an incredible feeling."

Making her professional surfing debut at 18 years of age in 2011, the North Narrabeen product competed on the World Surf League's women's Championship Tour for seven years, consistently placing in the top 10.

"I'd worked my whole life to be on the world tour," Enever says.

"Once I decided I wanted to be a professional surfer when I was a kid, I worked every day until I qualified at 17 [years].

"I qualified a lot earlier than I expected and everything happened really fast and before I knew it I was at the peak of surfing."

Needing an outlet to keep the fun in the "competitive, intense arena" of the WSL, Enever began exploring new places to surf.

"Outside of competition, I always tried to go and surf just for the love and fun of it," she says.

"That's where my love for big wave surfing blossomed.

"One year I just decided I was going to go to Fiji and Micronesia and surf these bigger waves of consequence and I got noticed for it and invited into one of the big wave events.

"I competed in the first-ever women's big wave event at Jaws in Peahi in 2016 but I got injured on my second wave. That was this fork in the road moment where the next year I was out of the water for six months.

"Because I was injured I couldn't go back on tour and I ended up falling off.

"Everyone expected me to go back to training after the injury but I was just like, 'Nup'.

"I'd had that taste of big wave surfing at Jaws and felt like this different person had come out of me. I thought, 'I need to go and see what this is all about'."

Describing herself as a "yes girl" who throws herself into new experiences, Enever left the tour after the 2017 season to go chase big waves.

Quickly falling into her new lifestyle of catching last-minute flights to wherever in the world a fresh swell would be popping up and picking up different jobs to pay her way, Enever admits that those closest to her probably thought what she was doing was "reckless".

"When I decided to quit the tour and move to big wave surfing it was announced that the next year they would make it equal prize money for the men's and women's competitions," she says.

"So, my whole team and my family was like, 'I think you're making the wrong decision. Like, you're leaving behind the tour where you can make money competing to go and spend all your money travelling the world to follow these waves where you can get injured and then spend more money on physio and rehab'.

"It didn't mathematically make sense to them for me to make this move when I was at the peak of my career but it was something that I was so heavily pulled towards that I just had to go.

"And the more I pushed myself with big waves, the more I felt like it was exactly what I wanted to do and where I was meant to be."

Now 33 years of age, Enever believes her "outrageous" career shift taught her to trust herself and gave her back control of her life as a young girl who grew up on tour.

"Being an athlete from such a young age with sponsors and management, and being in the limelight with media, I felt like I was pulled around doing things that weren't always right for me," she says.

"I got to this point when I was 21 where I was going, 'Who are you? What do you want to do? Go and do that'.

"That's what I'm most proud of in my entire career, that I trusted myself enough to leave behind everything that I knew and step into this new world that I didn't know and take that leap."

Six years after making the transition to big wave surfing, on January 22, 2023, Enever set the Guinness World Record for the biggest wave paddled in by a woman after successfully surfing a monster wave measuring 13.3 metres (44 feet) from trough to crest at Oahu's Outer Reef.

Next month, Enever will contest the prestigious Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational — more commonly known as The Eddie — which brings the world's best big wave surfers to Hawaii's Waimea Bay to showcase their skills.

Enever is one of just 10 women invited to surf at the 2024-25 event which runs for a three-month period from the middle of December in search of the biggest and best waves.

"It only runs when the waves are big enough," Enever says.

"Within the three months, invitees are on call. So, we could be anywhere in the world and if they see big swells coming, they'll keep an eye on them for a bit and if they give the green light, you've got like two days to get to Hawaii. Then the comp begins.

"So, you have to stay ready for three months."

This is Enever's second time being invited after she was named as an alternate in 2022-23.

The tournament did not run in 2023-24 as the required waves (minimum of 40 feet) never arrived.

It was while she was on the sidelines as an alternate for The Eddie, that Enever caught her world record wave.

Having overpowered the wave just down the beach from where The Eddie was being held, the achievement thrust her into the lineup for the following year.

"The day that I got my world record wave was the same day that The Eddie ran with women in it for the first time," Enever says.

"I was the second alternate for the women and they'd asked me to come down to the beach that day but I ended up saying, 'No'. This was the best swell in five years, I was going to go surf.

"So, I went and surfed this wave a couple of kilometres away and that was my world record wave.

"It's pretty cool that that wave is the reason I got invited in the end. It's pretty special."

The Eddie begins on Saturday, December 14 at Waimea Bay on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii.