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February 2012

NAKED AMBITION

He's young, gung-ho and supremely talented, so the question is, just how far can surfing sensation Julian Wilson go?

WORDS CRAIG TANSLEY
PHOTOGRAPHY KANE SKENNAR

There's one person Julian Wilson, 23, would like to thank for making him pursue a career as a professional surfer. It's not a guidance counsellor or an inspirational teacher, though his high school was just a stone's throw from the beach on Queensland's Sunshine Coast. Nor is it his dad, Mick, who pushed Julian into his first ever wave off Noosa Point when the kid was barely out of nappies.

No, it's Kelly Slater, the greatest surfer of all time. It wasn't anything Kelly Slater said, far from it. It was something Kelly Slater did. He lost, to Wilson, in a World Championship Tour event — the Quiksilver Pro — in front of 10,000 surf fans at the Gold Coast's Snapper Rocks.

Just imagine: you're 19 years old and you've just beaten a legend with nine world titles (at the time, he now has 11). Wouldn't it convince you that perhaps... just perhaps, you could make this pro-surfing caper work? Wilson remembers that life-changing day in February 2008 like it was yesterday.

"All heat I kept telling myself 'don't look at the beach, don't look at the beach'," he says. "There were so many people you couldn't see any sand. I knew all my family were there, I knew all my mates were there. I had the lead early, but this is Kelly Slater I'm surfing against, I grew up worshipping the guy, every surfer did.

"Then the siren went and I just couldn't believe I'd beaten him. I looked at the beach and saw about 10,000 people cheering. That's when I thought 'yep, this is what I want to do and I can do this'."

You could argue Wilson's fate was determined long before his stoush with Slater. His mum surfed, his dad surfed, his older brothers surfed competitively, and they all lived beside a beach that pumped out waves all day long.

"I reckon it wasn't long after I could walk. Dad would take me out and push me into waves at Noosa Heads," he says. "I remember I was so scared, but my older brothers were doing it so I had to, they always spurred me on. Everything I ever knew was at the beach."

The Wilson family has always been a tight unit, and nothing's changed since Wilson became a global surfing star. Brother Bart is Wilson's manager, while oldest brother Seb travels most of the year with Wilson. "Being the youngest means that any time my head gets big I get some smart-arse comment to level me right out," he says. "My ego doesn't stand a chance."

The only thing that slowed Wilson down once he made the decision to turn professional was Wilson himself. Despite people telling him he was ready, Wilson felt he lacked the confidence to surf competitively in the biggest surf breaks.

So in 2009, Wilson took a season offto surf around the world, filming footage for his biopic movie, Scratching The Surface. It gave him the opportunity to conquer death-defying waves and find new confidence. He was ready.

Wilson qualified in his first year, but even more remarkably, he did so after missing the first quarter of the season with a serious ankle injury. He'd endured an operation and two months of rehabilitation. When he arrived in Sri Lanka for his first event, he just wanted to surf competitively again. He won the whole event.

Coming into the Hawaiian leg of the series, he was still a long way from qualifying, but he made the finals of his last two events and scraped into the Dream Tour for 2011, earning himself Triple Crown Rookie Of The Year status.

But the 2011 Tour would prove to be a tough testing ground. Older, smarter competitors smell fresh blood and end careers before they've even begun. Wilson's resolve wavered, temporarily.

But by mid-season something clicked in Wilson's mind; he began to believe he was good enough. Now the results came thick and fast, he won June's Quiksilver Pro in Portugal and made runner-up at October's Quiksilver Pro in France. By year's end he'd made the world's Top 10, enough to earn him the prestigious Rookie Of The Year title for 2011.

But forget about 2011; 2012 is Wilson's year. He's training hard and feels he has the momentum to go even better this year, starting with this month's Quiksilver Pro on the Gold Coast (25 Feb-7 Mar).

"I'm excited, the Quiksilver Pro is my favourite event on tour," he says. "It's a good opportunity for me to give something back to the Breast Cancer Foundation (Wilson's mother is a breast cancer survivor and he's an ambassador for the organisation). I want to win it so bad. Maybe I'll get Kelly Slater in the final, that would be the ultimate."

JULIAN WILSON'S FAVOURITE HOLIDAY SPOTS

BALI
"Indonesia is hands-down the best place on earth for any surfer, just for its variety of waves. There are waves there for anyone. Plus, I really love just hanging out in Bali."

SUNSHINE COAST
"It's home, it was the best place to grow up. The waves mightn't be as good as on the Gold Coast but the upside is that there's no one out there. It's so laid back and as beautiful as anywhere I see when I travel."

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