Exhausted pain

A dull thud breaks the cathedral-like silence that had settled over the Rip Curl House since nightfall plunged Oahu’s North Shore into total darkness. It is five in the morning, and Corey Wilson wakes with a start: “I saw someone running through my room with a flashlight. I thought someone had broken into the house!” The Australian brand’s photographer rushes into the kitchen and comes face-to-face with Mick Fanning. Sitting at the table, the surfer from Penrith is sobbing. Just minutes earlier, his mother had knocked on the three-time world champion’s bedroom door, in tears, to break the news that Peter—Mick’s older brother—had died of a heart attack in his sleep.

At 34, the Australian was facing yet another tragedy, having already endured the loss of several loved ones. Back in 1998, while still a minor, the kid from Coolangatta learned that his other brother, Sean, had died in a car accident. The younger Fanning brother had been his inspiration, and the two siblings shared the same drive to excel on the World Tour. In 2013, he lost another close companion: his dog Taylor—named after his favorite surfer at the time, Taylor Knox—whom he had rescued from the pound seventeen years earlier. “I carried that pain around for months,” he told journalist Sean Doherty. Thus, 2015—the same season he survived a shark attack during the J-Bay event—will go down in memory as a dark year for the Australian surfer.

A few months earlier, the two brothers had had a conversation. Peter, who rarely revealed his feelings, had confided in Mick that one of his favorite things to do was watch his younger brother compete against the world’s best surfers on the Tour—and that it made him proud. On December 17, 2015—the day of the Pipe Masters final—those words surely echoed in the mind of the overall rankings leader. Early that morning, friends offered comfort and urged him not to suit up for the heat against Jamie O’Brien. Yet, knowing his brother would be watching over him, Mick listened to his heart and headed toward the legendary archipelago’s fearsome reef—fully determined to battle it out.

Facing J.O.B., a Pipeline veteran, Mick felt a surge of inspiration; his confidence soared, and the pressure vanished. He advanced to Round 4, where John John Florence and Kelly Slater awaited him. What followed was one of the most legendary heats in the history of the professional circuit. Endless barrel sections opened up, and the surfers entered a state of pure flow whenever a set hit the break along the “Seven Mile Miracle.” “That heat was both the most grueling and the most satisfying of my career,” Mick would later admit. With four minutes remaining and sitting in third place, the Australian took off on a long, winding left-hander. After a last-second bottom turn, he vanished behind a massive curtain of spray. Just when it seemed he might be overtaken by the foam ball or succumb to a technical error—given how fast the wave’s shoulder was moving—the three-time world champion burst out right before the section closed shut, raising his arms to the sky in a final tribute to his late brother. 9.30 points: he takes the lead and advances to the next round.

That year, Adriano de Souza was crowned the master of Pipeline—becoming the first Brazilian to win the prestigious Hawaiian event—at a Backdoor break where the swell had dropped and the wind was whipping. At the same time, the Guaruja native was crowned the 2015 world champion, as Mick Fanning’s run ended just shy of the final. Yet the Australian’s thoughts were elsewhere: “Losing the title wasn’t painful. At the end of the day, Pete was the only thing on my mind. After that heat, I discovered that my childhood friends had taken a direct flight to Hawaii to support me. I lost that day. But I realized that, in life, I was winning.”