COURTESY PHOTO BY CLAY ROGERS
Big-wave surfer Robert Gompers took 11th place in this year's Tow-in World Cup on Maui. He died Friday night at age 34.
Robert Gompers lived for waves. ROBERT GOMPERS /
BIG-WAVE RIDERHawaii’s big waves let
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surfer live his dreams
By Mary Vorsino
mvorsino@starbulletin.com"He was a real fish," movie producer Glen Beadles said about the professional surfer and his longtime friend. "He was an avid water person."
And that's why Gompers moved in 1992 from Arizona to Maui, where he also worked as a bar manager at Casanova Italian Restaurant in Makawao.
"Living in Hawaii ... has enabled me to live my dreams of riding big waves," Gompers wrote on his Web site (www.gomps.tv) earlier this year.
The 34-year-old big-wave surfer had made surfing plans for the weekend, but he died Friday night on Maui's Honoapiilani Highway when his motorcycle drifted across the center line and collided with oncoming cars.
Gomper's girlfriend, Allison Courter, 21, of Sacramento, Calif., who was his passenger, also died.
Gompers, who grew up in Maryland and learned to surf there, took 11th place in this year's Tow-in World Cup on Maui and ninth place in 2001's tow-in competition.
In tow-in surfing, two surfers work as a team. One surfer uses a motorized watercraft to transport the other into large waves that are not catchable by paddling.
Gompers is survived by his mother and father, a brother and two sisters. Their names were not available.
Funeral arrangements were pending, but his ashes were expected to be scattered at sea, said Ralph Sifford, Gomper's former tow-in surfing partner.
