“White lightning” is taking all the necessary precautions to ensure lighting doesn’t strike twice. After Mick’s encounter with a shark last month at J-Bay, he’s opted for a new board color-scheme to hopefully fend off his sharp-toothed foes. Mick previously had been rocking yellow-bottomed boards but in the diving community, the bright color is known as “yum yum yellow.” In an interview with Unscriptd, an athlete-focused biography syndicate, Mick discussed his decision to switch from yellow to blue.
“The yellow is what I’ve been predominantly riding all year,” Mick said while standing on a Tahitian beach in between heats at Teahupoo. “[I’ve been] doing some research and reading some dive sites and the main color they talk about not to use is ‘yum yum yellow.’ So yellow is out.”
Unfortunately Mick still has “heaps of yellow boards”; with those, he decided to go full bumblebee and add some black stripes (a supposed shark turn-off). But with his new boards, Mick’s opted for a new color-scheme: blue with black geometric designs. “Hopefully that sort of deters them a little more,” Mick continued.
Mick returns to the Billabong Pro Tahiti in heat 7 of round 3, where he’ll take on Spain’s Aritz Aranburu.
