Good grief, been watching too many of these videos and they all make you gasp that someone could survive that kind of thrashing, especially at Teahupoo.
I obviously don't ride in anything like that, but a few years ago we had an amazing five days of strong NE winds at OBX. We rode the last four days of it doing downwinders from near Salvo to near Avon. The offshore bouy was recording swells of 30 feet and wind consistently at 30 knots on the last day. I went out on my smallest kite at the time, 6m Best Cabo, and my bigger buddy was on his 5.5m Best Kahoona. It was epic with the waves breaking on the third outside sandbar. I was trying to ride them on TT, but would get going so fast it was scary and would bail most of the time. Then on one I caught the front tip and went over the handbars, but luckily this wave did not break or I'm pretty sure I would not have survived it. We were out there on our own, indeed that day my buddy stayed on the inside, so noone to help. I went inside and joined him after that. I think back to that, especially now that I have injured a shoulder and need surgery, and think at my age (64) I might never get to do that again.