Owen Wright moments after the wave that gave him a perfect heat in Fiji. Photo: WSL
Owen Wright will retire from competitive surfing, or “taking (any) heavy water risks,” the longtime CT athlete announced on Tuesday. That announcement came along with the news that Wright, the 2010 CT Rookie of the Year, will be competing as a wildcard at the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach in April — his last hoorah in professional surfing.
“I just don’t have to take the risks that I used to, and I can manage that now,” Wright said, referring to the ongoing impacts of a 2015 brain injury suffered at Pipeline. “That decision’s kind of come down from my medical team. Over the years I’ve had a number of head injuries and concussions, and it’s gotten to a point where I need to prioritize my long term health.”
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The 2015 injury was life-altering, taking Wright out of the Pipe Masters as he finished the year fifth in the rankings. He’d eventually have to sit out the entire 2016 season as he faced a serious road to recovery, one traveled mostly outside of the public eye, leaving many surf fans to wonder if he’d ever return at all when he shared that he wasn’t even able to get to his feet in his first surf back. Wright was eventually granted a wildcard by the WSL the next year, winning his first CT event in his return with a victory at the 2017 Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast, a victory that felt nothing short of miraculous. In 2019, Wright topped that with a historic victory at the Tahiti Pro Teahupo’o, qualifying for Australia’s first-ever Olympic surfing team. He’d go on to win bronze in the 2021 Summer Games, padding a Hall-of-Fame-worthy resume that spanned a decade on the World Tour: the first athlete to ever surf two perfect heats in an event (Fiji, 2015), he finished seven seasons ranked in the top ten, collected four career tour victories, and almost a dozen perfect tens in more than 100 CT events.
“I’ve been on a crazy journey and haven’t been in great form for years,” Wright told The Inertia’s Joe Carberry at the 2021 Games in Tokyo. “I’ve struggled with some bad symptoms behind the scenes of TBI recovery. My first diagnosis was it’s going to take 5-10 years to get back to my best and I’m six years in now and I feel like I’m just starting to show the form I’ve shown in the past.”
The following year, Wright missed the WSL’s mid-year cut after five events and was relegated to the Challenger Series. He competed in the circuit’s first two events but stopped pursuing a return to the CT via CS requalification after the GWM Sydney Surf Pro.
“After my traumatic brain injury in 2015, my desire to prove to myself and the world that I could still be great and overcome this life-threatening incident inspired my recovery,” he said Tuesday. “Now eight years later, after challenges and accomplishments, I can look back happily, knowing I achieved that goal.”
No doubt there will be a large contingent of fans rooting for Wright in his Bells Beach swan song, an event he’s never won during an otherwise accomplished career.
