Background Surfing practice has been growing in recent years with an increasing number of recreational practitioners, especially in countries like Portugal with very good ocean conditions. Most studies consider all professional and recreational surfer injuries.

Objective Determine the rate of injuries and their characteristics during the recreational surf practice.

Design Retrospective cohort study.

Setting Standardised data collected with a validated questionnaire.

Patients 150 Portuguese surfers aged between 8 to 68 years practising during at least one of the two seasons in the study agreed to participate.

Interventions Both gender recreational surfers.

Main Outcome Measurements Retrospective assessment of the last 2 years injuries occurrence and conditions of occurrence.

Results A total of 33 athletes sustained 45 injuries (22% injured players) with 9,72 injuries per 1000 h of exposure. The greatest number of injuries occurred in the lower leg (ankle 20%; knee 13%) followed by the shoulder (17.8%). The most common injury mechanism was collision/direct contact (59%) or torsion (11.4%) with the joints most affected (24.4%). Injuries more frequent were wound (17.8%), contusion (11%) and inflammation (11%). The surfboard (28.9%) and the athlete itself (24.4%) were the main cause of the injury, occurring mainly when performing manoeuvres (20.9%) especially descending the wave (16.3%). There are no statistically significant differences in injury frequency per 1000 h of exposure with regards to sex, surfer position (goofy or regular), surfing side (left, right or both). Male athletes demonstrate higher injury rates (women 7.94, SD 1.96; men 10.27, SD 2.89) per 1000 h of exposure.

Conclusions Recreational surfers reveal a considerable injury frequency per 1000 h of exposure, independent of gender, surfer position or side. The greater incidence of lower-limb and shoulder injuries must be underlined, as well as the fact that collision/direct contact represents more than 50% of the injury mechanisms.