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Bertlemann, Larry

Loquacious big-wave rider, explorer, and health advocate from San Francisco, California; founder of the Surfer's Medical Association. Renneker was born (1952) in Chicago, Illinois, the son of a psychiatrist father and artist mother, moved with his family to Los Angeles at age four, and began surfing at 10. He received a B.S. in biology and epistemics from U.C. Santa Cruz in 1975; four years later he took his M.D. from U.C. San Francisco; in 1990 he began a private practice specializing in research and advocacy for patients with life-threatening illness.

Renneker founded the Surfer's Medical Association (SMA) in 1987 during the First International Medical Conference on the Sport of Surfing, held on Fiji's Tavarua Island; from 1988 to 1995 he was the principal contributor to the SMA's "Surf Docs" Q&A health column in 

Renneker first rode Maverick's, the big-wave break located between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, in 1990. Around that time, he also also began looking for breaks along the world's coldest and most remote coastlines, and by 2001 the tall, bearded, hawk-nosed regularfooter had ridden waves off the Aleutian Islands, mainland Alaska, Iceland, and Tierra del Fuego. He was the first person to surf both Spitsbergen (800 miles from the North Pole), as well as Antarctica.

While he had neither neither the ambition or raw talent to be a successful competition surfer, Renneker nonetheless accepted an invitation to the debut Quiksilver Men Who Ride Mountains contest at Maverick's in 1999. The oldest entrant at 47, he finished 12th in a field of 20. When tow-in surfing became popular at Maverick's in the late '90s, Renneker stepped up as the voice of oppostion. "The noise and the stink," he said in 2001, beginning a list of the reasons he felt personal watercraft should be banned from local waters. "They're tearing up kelp; they scare the crap out of the birds, seals, sea lions and sea otters; they leave the water coated with that horrible oil."

Renneker was the title subject in 1992's "Playing Doc's Games," a two-part 

 article, and the following year he was featured in an episode of the Ed Bradley–hosted 

 newsmagazine show on CBS. In 1998 he appeared in the documentary film 

Renneker coauthored the medical advice book 

 (1993), and wrote the foreword to Peter Dixon's 

Renneker, Mark

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