“Julian Wilson was caught off guard by this vulnerable, crazy moment of admiration and truth.”
On Saturday, surf fans were privy to one of the great surf finals, the world’s best surfer in waves two feet and under and two-time world champ, Filipe Toledo, and a never-was champ but a king at every wave from Teahupoo to Pipe, Julian Wilson.
History tells us that Filipe Toledo won the explosive final in pretty little righthand runners at Burleigh Heads. Daddy of two Toledo, who turned thirty one month back, against daddy of one, Julian Wilson, thirty-six and coming off a five-year retirement. Real close and the difference a nine-pointer of Filipe’s that some commentators have described as “the most overscored wave history” although I side with the judges, the second turn as hot as watching a brawny teen jock pumping my gal dog fashion.
Towards the end of the final, Julian Wilson lit up on Filipe Toledo although the exact reason was hard to pinpoint. Was it because of Julian’s dissatisfaction with the scores Pip was getting, as I initially thought, or was it over a perceived paddling interference?
Neither as it turns out.
As Vaughan Blakey, a stud famous for his high-grade podcast Ain’t the Swell with Jed Smith and who was commentating the event, explains, Julian Wilson was bent outta shape by the Brazilian pack on the point and, not long after, by Filipe Toledo’s “submissive hand jive.”
“He was fully fucking off it,” says Vaughan. “And then if you watch the footage, because the one thing that was puzzling to me about whether it was a prior thing or whatever was like Filipe starts doing this submissive sort of explanation hand jive, you know, like he’s not fighting back, he’s properly going, and what I heard was that he was going, ‘Mate, I can’t control that. Like, that’s not my fault. I respect you. You’ve always been one of my favourite surfers.
“And he starts going into this kind of deeper space because both these guys walked away from the tour for their families. This is what I heard, is that he was going, ‘I respect what you’ve done. I respect that you left. You’ve always been one of my favourite surfers. And at this point, Jules is so steamed up that he palms him, puts his hand up, open face palm and he stopped talking. I don’t want to hear it.
“But what I heard after the fact was it fully got to him. Like he was caught off guard by this vulnerable, crazy moment of admiration and truth in the thick of the pinnacle moment of how tense that battle was. Totally. Which to me, fuck man, like I mean what a crazy moment in sport! It pulled it out of this proper battle into this beautiful little like moment of clarity and space where they were just two dad bods going at it and looking for a moment of glory.
“But it fucking rattled Fil that he wasn’t able to connect with Julian in that moment because he just basically fucking tries to hammer off down the point as quickly as he can.”
Essential.
