Sally Fitzgibbons is hard as nails. For such a small and pretty girl, she’s got the constitution of a UFC fighter. As anyone who’s busted an eardrum knows, that shit hurts.
On her final wave in round two of the Fiji Women’s Pro, Sally tucked into a tight little barrel and got sucked over the falls. Doctors at the event eventually told her she ruptured her eardrum, which, for most people, would be the end of it. But not for Sally.
A few years ago, I was in Costa Rica. There was a perfect little right-hander in front of a river mouth that no one was surfing. I, along with a friend, paddled out and surfed for hours with no one else around. The water was a little browner than usual, but we figured that was just the runoff from the river. We figured that until we both contracted raging ear infections and a local told us we basically surfed in raw sewage. After a few days of stumbling around, our equilibrium all out of whack, jamming everything from pencils to homemade suction devices built from water bottles and Bic pens, my ear drum blew up in a movie theatre. It was horrible, and I don’t wish it on anyone, ever.
But when I sat quietly weeping in the movie theatre, Sally Fitzgibbons chose a different route. Instead of calling it quits, she paddled back out for her round three heat against Laura Enever and Lakey Peterson… and won. Not only won, but won convincingly with a high-wave score of 9.60.
