He is the chosen one. As 3x World Champion, international shark whisperer, and crowned “Sportsman of the Year” from Gentlemen’s Quarterly, Mick Fanning is more likely than most surfers to snag the wave of the session at any given surf break on any given day.
But at Snapper Rocks, Mick’s livelihood embodied in a surf break, no one else stands a chance.
Over the weekend the implausibly perfect and ever-congested with hordes of humanity Superbank was going off with the wave doing its best turquoise blue mimicry of Kelly Slater’s flawless manmade wave. And among the swarm of spine-tingling transcendent tubes, Mick, of course, got two of the best waves.
Seen above at the 54-second mark, Fanning tucks under the lip on a shoulder-high screamer. He bobs and bounces until finally, at the 1:18 time slot, he emerges from the cylindrical snarl. That’s a mind-bending 24 seconds of tube time. Nearly half a minute. More than the allotted 15 seconds for an Instagram clip. Longer than most millennials attention spans (although even the most twitchy ADHD tween would have trouble taking their eyes off the screen here).
And although Matt Coleman, the videographer of the nature-defying tube seen above, captured one of the waves of the day, there’s another, perhaps even crazier one that went down. Have your mind blown below with a bonus barrel from Mick – hanging on through a hollow wall of water, dodging bodyboarders and human limbs along the way.
MF the tube pig @mfanno What a wave! He hit a few speed humps along the way and still didn't fall @stacegalbraith
Posted by Bede Durbidge on Monday, January 25, 2016
