Nearly a month after his run-in with a shark at J-Bay, Mick Fanning has returned to competition completely unfazed. Not only did he return after the harrowing incident, but he also smoked Adam Melling and local Tahitian wildcard Taumata Puhetini in round one’s challenging, wind-swept conditions over the weekend. After returning to the singlet, Mick caught up with Unscriptd, an athlete-focused biography syndicate, with a video blog resembling a reality TV show confessional room.
“To tell you the truth, leading up to the heat, I didn’t know what was going to be going through my head once I started getting ready,” Mick said. “But to be totally honest, it was just like any other game day, really. I was just focused on getting some bombs in some really tricky conditions.”
As Mick talks into the camera, MTV’s Real World or CBS’s Survivor comes to mind—the behind-the-scenes confessional rooms of reality TV shows where the contestants reveal their “true” feelings. But instead of catty gossip, Fanning talks about his comfortable return to competition after the shark incident.
In the background is Mick’s Tahiti quiver. Throughout most of the year, his go-to board design of recent has been a yellow bottom, which has been dubbed by the diving community as “yum yum yellow.” Instead, Mick has changed up the shark-enticing yellow for blue and black, in hopes of fending off his deep sea foes. In another video posted by Unscriptd, Mick explains the strategic change: “Hopefully that sort of deters them a little bit more.”
