Joel Tudor was born in 1976 in San Diego and started surfing at five. He turned pro at 14, and at 15 he won an ASP event, the youngest surfer to do it.

Through the 1990s he became the face of a return to classic, single-fin longboarding, with a smooth, traditional style. He won the ASP world longboard title in 1998 in the Canary Islands and his second in 2004 in Biarritz, and he won the U.S. Open of Longboarding eight times. In 2021, at 45, he won a third world title at Malibu, making him the oldest world champion in surfing history.

The films on Nalu TV start with The Cure for the Summertime Blues (1993). He rides in Chris Bystrom’s longboard classics Blazing Longboards and Longboarding Is Not a Crime, and in Chris Klopf’s Classical Gas (1999) and Style Mongrels (2006), with more than 35 films in all.

In 2010 he started the Duct Tape Invitational, where hand-picked riders share waves on single-fin longboards. Away from surfing he is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, and he made Surf Book with photographer Michael Halsband.