Most Wince-Worthy Surfing Wipeouts Of The Year

A couple weeks ago we posted Billabong XXL's 2012-2013 big wave nominees for your gawking enjoyment.

Today we give you something no less gawk-worthy, but definitely more painful to watch: their nominees for Wipeout of the Year.

For any surf writers out there tempted to use metaphors about "conquering" nature or putting it into submission, let these videos be a reminder that big wave surfing is the opposite of that; it's daring nature to conquer you and making a thrilling escape. Sometimes.

Let's try a few other comparisons:

Wince as Brett Burcher gets sucked into Western Australia's The Right and gets spun like a rag doll in a washing machine. Cringe as fellow Aussie Chris Shanahan finds himself perched on the lip of the same wave as the barrel opens up underneath him, and stifle an inappropriate laugh has he hangs in the air like Wile E. Coyote before plummeting a good twenty feet into the maw of the beast.

As for the other nominees, Jaws takes a bite out of Tom Dosland, Joao De Macedo gets trampled by Maverick's, and Axi Muniain gets buried at Nazare.

I'm running out of bad puns here, so just watch the video already.