Australia’s next big thing back in front of ‘8th ball’
SYDNEY, June 29, (RTRS): Four times over two days off the coast of Fiji earlier this month, Owen Wright hauled his body onto a strip of polyurethane and plunged into the barrel of a three-metre wave.
Four times the Australian had the strength and agility to race along the wall of water and exit just before the jaws of the wave snapped shut and smashed him into the coral reef below.
The result was four perfect scores, a feat unprecedented on the elite World Surf League Tour which earned the 25year-old the Fiji Pro title and thrust him into contention for a first world crown.
“It was an incredible high,” Wright told Reuters at Sydney’s iconic Bondi beach on his return to Australia.
“Both of the waves I made in the final, I thought, ‘wow, that’s it, that’s a huge one’.
“You’re so stoked when you make it out of a barrel. Emotions are just coming out, it’s unreal.
“It was only that afternoon that I sat down and the adrenalin wore off and it was like, ‘woah, body’s sore’.”
Wright’s historic performance put him in third place in the title race with six rounds remaining, well in the frame to succeed Brazilian Gabriel Medina as world champion.
It would be the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for Wright, who grew up in a surfing-obsessed family in Culburra, New South Wales, and never wanted to do anything else.
Two of the remaining six legs of the tour, in Tahiti and Hawaii, should offer big waves similar to those in Fiji and play to the advantage of the 1.91m (6ft 3in) Wright.
Nature and nurture may have given Wright the raw talent to be a world champion but he knows that none of that will matter without hard work and his Fiji success came after two trips to Tahiti to practise on similar waves.
Wright may not be much of a fan of surfing at the Olympics — he thinks it is too much of an art form — but he most definitely believes in preparing like any other elite athlete. “In a twohour surf you’re doing roughly seven kilometres, so two two-hour surfs a day, that’s 14 kms,” he said.
“So you’ve got to be fit and you’ve got to know how to recover. And you’ve got to be healthy if you are going to be doing that five times a week or you’ll just get injured.”
No work came harder than that Wright put in when, having finished third on the pro tour and won Rookie of the Year in 2011, he left the water at Australia’s Bells Beach doubled over with a herniated disc which wiped out his 2013 season.
The heir apparent to Mick Fanning and Joel Parkinson as Australian surfing’s next big thing spent 10 months out of the water and found getting back into competitive shape was as much a mental as a physical challenge.
“Surfing’s something that I love and not being able to do something that you love for so long was kind of hard to do,” he recalled.
“If you are out for a year, you’re behind everybody that has stayed out there. I was just behind the eight ball last year but this year, I feel I’m getting back up there and hopefully I’ll get in front of the eight ball.”
Having said all that, Wright is under no illusion as to how lucky he is to travel around the world, often accompanied by his sister Tyler who finished second on the women’s tour last year, doing something he loves.