PLUS MUM TELLS: MY MICK
MICK Fanning’s mum Liz Osborne doesn’t bother telling people what her son’s name is anymore.
She just tells them that he was that surfer who got attacked by the shark live on TV.
The triple world surfing champion, who won his first event at Bells Beach as a wildcard in 2001, is one of Australia’s greatest sportsman.
But as he retires from professional surfing at Bells Beach’s Rip Curl Pro this week, even his mum admits that his shark attack live on television at Jeffrey’s Bay in South Africa in 2015 will be what he is remembered for.
“When I went to America that year I went into a department store and they asked me why I was in California,” Liz Osborne, 68, said. “I said I was here because my son was surfing, Mick Fanning. They didn’t know his name but they knew all about the guy who was attacked by a shark.”
Ms Osborne, who is also Fanning’s manager, added: “The shark attack was very good for his career.”
Fanning has been one of the greatest surfers in Australian history, and one of the few genuine rivals to surfing god Kelly Slater in the modern era.
The 36-year-old always had the talent to become one of the best in the world, and the determination.
Liz, her daughter and her four sons, moved to the Gold Coast from Ballina in New South Wales when Fanning was in Year 7.
Her four boys wanted to be closer to the waves on the Gold Coast and the exposure to sponsors.
Mick’s older brother Sean, who tragically died in a car accident in 1998, was going into Year 11 at Palm Beach Currumbin High School when they arrived.
But Mick was told that, unlike his former home of New South Wales, students only moved up to high school in Year 8. He was having none of it. “Mick had the biggest tantrum ever, he said he was not going back to primary school,” Ms Osborne said.
“The headmaster said ‘are you smart?,’ he said ‘yes, all right, we will give you a go’.”
So Mick and his brother Sean set to work on changing the curriculum.
The proud rugby league school did not have a surfing program, despite it being home to some of the world’s best waves. The headmaster had no chance.
“They nagged and nagged at him. He agreed, they were so lucky that the headmaster listened to them,” Ms Osborne said. And the school’s first surfing team was formed. Fanning surfed all the way through school, sponsored by Quiksilver.
But he changed over to Rip Curl when he was in Year 12 and had to go on a boat trip in Indonesia.
He had already missed a fair bit of school and this was the last straw.
“School said if you don’t come to school tomorrow, then you’re out and that was in the middle of Year 12,” Ms Osborne said.
Fanning never finished school, or went to university. But he’s on track to become the Elon Musk of surfing.
He has his own brewery, Balter, makes his own environmentally-friendly surfboards, spruiked Mercedes-Benz cars and became an environmental warrior for charity Wild Ark.
When he does retire from surfing to his beachfront home at Bilinga, near Coolangatta, he will be busy.