Is a third ‘Chip in the cards for Florence? Photo: Aaron Hughes//World Surf League
“It will be really fun in the next few years to push the level of surfing. I just want to get better. I want to be the guy that you go into a heat with and he feels unstoppable.”
That was John John Florence, straight after he’d won his second world title at Pipe in 2017. He was the first surfer to go back-to-back since Kelly Slater in 2012. He’d doused a raging comeback from Gabriel Medina. He was 25. The claim to soon be unstoppable was justified.
His road to a third world title looked straightforward: smooth tarmac, no sharp corners, an airport runway to a sustained period of world surfing domination. However, early in the journey, the first minor speed bumps appeared. In May of the next year, he suffered a tear to his right ACL that ruled him out of the back half of 2018. The three-peat was out.
In 2019 he returned to the tour at full fitness and looked back to his 2017 peak. Then came another ACL injury, this time in Rio. A world title tilt was replaced by surgery and six months of rehab. Almost miraculously, he was back in the water for Pipeline and qualified for the Tokyo Olympics.
Then COVID came, taking out everyone’s chance of a world title in 2020. In 2021, the WSL Finals came in and a top-five spot became Florence’s primary goal. He was well on track until he did his ACL again mid-heat at Margaret River. Such was his injury record it was considered positive news that this time the damage was done on his other “good knee.”
Again, Florence set about fixing himself for the start of the next season. In 2022 he was ranked third when he tore his MCL at the G-Land Pro. It was the fourth consecutive season he’d had his campaign stopped in its tracks around the halfway stage.
The year 2023, however, was a turning point. He had restructured his training, focusing on movement and injury prevention. “I think it’s made me a better surfer in a weird way, I think a smarter surfer,” Florence said on his injury and time away from the Championship Tour at the start of the season. “I feel like I’m more patient on the wave, and I feel like I’m stronger because I’m training more.”
The stats back his instincts. Since the start of that CT season, the Hawaiian hasn’t missed an event. The Corona Pro in Fiji was his 19th in a row, his longest unbroken sequence since he claimed the world title in 2017. The only event he missed was last year’s WSL Finals when he finished the rankings at number eight. Disappointing perhaps, but you sensed that was a fair trade for an injury-free year and a better platform for a crack in 2024.
This year, the road has finally smoothed out. Potential curveballs of the Olympics and the birth of his first child were navigated relatively serenely. The speed bumps, hair pins, potholes and diversions over the last six years seemed to have been graded flat and mapped evenly. This year he has made four finals, won one, and Bells was his only early round loss. In 2017 he won the world title without claiming an event victory, consistency being the bedrock of his charge.
If it were back in 2017, John John would have already claimed the world title. His 3,000-rating point lead would have been enough to have him out of sight. If I’m to stretch this road analogy beyond breaking point (if it isn’t already), it might be a good time to bring in Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalypse masterpiece The Road. With John being a literary type, he’ll know the main character advises to, “Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.”
Florence has done that. He’s never wavered from his goal of another world title. Never thought about not coming back from yet another shredded ligament, a fracture of a bone or a muscle strained beyond its capacity. The WSL Finals have now added a final stretch of tarmac to his long road to redemption. He has to win two heats to nab a third championship. If he does, he can still claim to be unstoppable.
