Joel Parkinson

SUPERTUBOS

Supertubes today.

This place is like South Straddie on steroids. And the waves come in like Pipe, just these big peaks rolling through. You’ve just got to paddle into position and get under the peak. It’s not Pipe by any means, but after surfing such crap lately it feels awesome to see those big lumps come in and heave. It’s so much like South Straddie the way it pulls and bends, like a big chunky day at South Straddie.

It’s good to be back and winning heats now that the title is all over for me, to just go and surf a heat and relax and enjoy it and not have that in the back of your mind, you know. The outcome of that heat yesterday didn’t have as much riding on it and it let me surf it with no pressure. I had so much fun in that heat, more fun than I’ve had in all my heats in the past few months. And the last few heats I’ve surfed have been scrappy threes and fours, so it was good to have a heat where there were good waves and we were trading eights and nines. Today the surf is so good, guys are going to be throwing away sevens, eights and nines in this contest, guaranteed. That’s when it gets exciting. There are plenty of waves out there, you just have to shark it a bit, paddle around and go hunting them. It’s like surfing South Straddie in that way; you don’t sit still for too long and you have to go to the waves, they don’t come to you.

I can’t wait to surf against Dusty. He’s a good mate, and he surfed an incredible heat, he thought he was out at Backdoor. We’ve had a couple of good heats in the past and hopefully the waves will stick around and we get to throw some nines at each other.

THANK YOU, MAHALO, OBRIGADO

Have just switched my computer on for the first time in 48 hours and looked at the site and was totally overwhelmed. I read every word of every comment, and some of them had me in tears, fully brought me to tears. There were crew from Brazil, crew from South Africa, crew from Israel, as well as my friends from home, people from all around the world. They were telling me they were so proud of what I’d done, and that I’d been courageous and been a good sport. To be honest, it’s freaking me out a little bit. It was such an emotional day that I just kind of rode it wherever it took me. Losing the title was tough. I came up to the house after losing and shed a few tears and just wanted to hide. But I knew carrying Mick up the beach was not only the right thing to do, it’s exactly what Mick would be doing for me. For all the messages you guys have sent I can’t thank you enough. As much as I lost the world title I gained the respect of so many good people all around the world and I reckon that means even more.

Congratulations mate!

Mick, well done mate. As kids who would have thought we would be doing this! We always wanted to be surfing on the world tour and here we were today gunning for number 1 place. It’s been an amazing year, and your persistence paid off. So with that said, raise your glasses to Mick Fanning everyone!

Secondly, to all my fans I have met along the way through Twitter, my website and around the world, my friends and family, thanks so much for your amazing support throughout the entire year. This isn’t the end, it’s just the beginning.

See ya in 2010… Parko