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Bertlemann, Larry

Battered but durable kneeboarder and photographer from Newport Beach, California; a fixture since 1964 at the infamous Newport Wedge. "Romanosky," a 1971 

 article noted, "is a good-looking Vietnam veteran who angers easily and is considered the only blond Polish kneeboard rider in existence as well as the best kneeboard rider period."

Romanosky was born (1948) in the Dominican Republic, the son of a career U.S. Marine officer, and was raised on or near a series of American military bases, before his family finally landed in Newport Beach. He began bodysurfing during middle school, at Corona Del Mar, just across the channel from the Wedge, and by 1964 he was riding the Wedge on a bellyboard.

After a two-year combat tour in Vietnam, Romanosky returned to Newport Beach and began riding the Wedge on a kneeboard—he was likely the first person to do so—and by the end of the decade he was working for a local company belly- and kneeboard company called El Paipo.

In 1970, SURFER published the first of what would be semiregular series of Wedge-themed feature articles from Romanosky. "Why did I knee-ride [the Wedge]?" Romanosky asked of himself.

I just felt it had to be done. I guess it was for the ultimate thrill achieved from sliding so fast to the bottom of the wave, without being thrown out, and then slicing—I mean slicing—a bottom turn. Some people will think I'm mad. But these are the same people who said, a dozen years ago, that riding the Pipeline could not be done.

Few surfers in history have been so devoted to a single break as Romanosky was to the Wedge; in 1987, the 

 described him as "the purest of the Wedge purists." Romanosky himself once said that news of a big incoming south swell left him "practically insane with longing, adrenaline and anticipation. I'm addicted to the place. I cannot foresee a time when I won't be this way."

Romanosky later made a side-career from the Wedge as a photojournalist, and by designing and building kneeboards; in 1970 he helped create the Shoe, a hybrid board used in both a kneeling and standing position.

In the 1980s, Romanosky was the most vocal of the Wedge's old-guard surfer to speak out against what he called an "invasion" of bodyboarders. "It's sacrilege," he explained to a reporter in 1987. "It takes about as much talent to ride a bodyboard as it does to push a lawnmower. You ride the Wedge because it is a thrill, and that thrill is being diminished by the hordes of bodyboarders."

Romanosky was still surfing the Wedge on big days well into the 2000s, despite a long history of Wedge-inflicted injuries, including torn knee cartilage, broken teeth, a broken nose, and back sprains that left him temporarily paralyzed.

Romanosky, Ron

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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The Sunday Joint

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Surfboards