Julian Wilson’s a good looking fella. Feminine cheekbones, piercing eyes, perfect teeth, etc. Women like Julian Wilson’s face. It looks like something someone would chisel from marble. That’s his money-maker, after all. But in his third round heat at J-Bay, that chiseled mug was almost shattered. Almost. Really, he just scraped his forehead a bit, and everyone moved on. Watch it happen at 2:24:15 in the video above, and watch his interview at 2:53:15. He came out of it pretty much unscathed, but just imagine! The world’s most handsome surfer turned into a hideous, malformed creature of the night at the same spot where the world’s most handsome surfer valiantly paddled out to save Mick Fanning from a shark attack almost exactly one year ago!
“I was just finished the wave,” Julian explained, “and I knew I was in the shallow part of the reef.I thought I was pulling out to avoid going too far in. As soon as I went to duck my head under to shoot out the back, there was no water underneath the whitewash. So I just went straight face into the barnacles.”
Going “straight face” into the barnacles isn’t good for one’s forehead. Just ask Keala Kennelly, owner of what is perhaps the most hard-to-look-at injury in surfing, aside from what happened to Tom Carroll’s butt hole back in ’87. Suffice it to say, Julian’s face could have been a lot worse.
