With a beautiful cameo by Kelly Slater!
There’s a purity about John John Florence and his connection with the ocean that’s very hard not to fall head over heels with. Where others might see surfing as means to an end (riches, houses, cars, gals), for John, surfing is the means and the end.
In this episode of Twelve, we find the soon-to-be world champion in Tahiti. He fishes, he pilots yachts, roars across lagoons on jetskis, all with his platoon of Hawaiian pals.
“We always seem to get insane little waves, that no one’s around. At the end of the day, you’re always surfed out and you’re like that was the best day ever,” he says.
Trite, if you didn’t know that he feels it.
About competing he says: “You hear people say, hey, go out there and have fun, don’t worry about the other competitor. But to actually… do it… that’s hard.”
It’s hardly a plot spoiler to say John’s Tahitian dream is run-over by a phenomenally in-form Kelly Slater but the heats, the behind-the-scene thoughts, especially during his heat with Medina, are revealing.
“I was so psyched with adrenaline I couldn’t calm myself down for the final,” he says.
Kelly, of course, is in there, the master of mind games, giving John his hat, high-fiving, all the before the final. (See at 5:53 minutes.)
We see Kelly win. We see John tweak his knee. We see the rehab. We see his difficult Trestles heats.
