Kalani David, a rising star in the world of surfing and skating, died in Costa Rica on Saturday after suffering a seizure while surfing the waves. he was 24
The news was first reported by The Inertia. It was apparently confirmed by David’s younger brother Keoni, who wrote on his Instagram story: “You are the best brother I could ever ask for. I will miss you Kalani.”
Born and raised on the north shore of Oahu in Hawaii, David was born with a surfboard in one hand and a skateboard in the other, and by the age of 14 he was already considered “a seasoned veteran,” as his X- Games biography is called . In 2012 he won one of the first of his many major awards, winning a gold medal at the ISA World Junior Surfing Championship in Panama.
The 24-year-old also had Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, a congenital heart condition in which an extra electrical lead can cause an abnormally – sometimes dangerously – rapid heartbeat. In some patients it causes a seizure, which, while not always fatal, is often accompanied by loss of consciousness, which is particularly dangerous in the ocean.
David suffered his first seizure in August 2016 while skating with friends at a park in Oceanside, California. The then 18-year-old later revealed on Instagram that he “fell on my face and woke up in an ambulance.” The episode briefly stopped his heart and prompted three more seizures in the hospital. “So thankful to be alive!” David wrote.
Months later – just before Christmas – David had another seizure in Oahu, Hawaii. The episode happened in the middle of the night, and he later posted on Instagram that he was “lucky to be alive at all” after charging for about six hours before friends found him. He spent two days in a medically-induced coma and weeks later underwent surgery to remove, or “burn out,” as he put it, an extra muscle on his heart.
Giving up on one of his two loves was never an option for David. “If it was a matter of life or death and I had to choose between skating and surfing,” he told Stab magazine in 2016, “I would choose death.”
Tributes for the young phenomenon flooded in after reports of his death surfaced on Saturday. Peter King, a surf photographer and filmmaker, was one of the first to memorialize David. “I will always remember your excitement when we were filming Skate and Surf and how much hope you had for your future [sic],” he wrote.
In mourning David’s death, Freesurf magazine called him “a child prodigy indeed” with “literally hundreds if not thousands of trophies”. The outlet noted in a Facebook post that it has “followed his career for at least 15 years. Maybe since kindergarten?”
“Kalani was one of the most talented surfer/skaters in the world,” surfing legend Kelly Slater wrote on his Instagram Story, “who was constantly pushing his limits every time he got up.”