Bells Beach: The moment came and went in an instant.
Four-time Bells Beach champion Mick Fanning held a slender lead against world champion John John Florence in a tense and highly-anticipated quarter-final.The Hawaiian trailed by just 0.04 with less than three minutes left. Fanning let a wave pass, hopeful of more potential beyond the horizon.
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Jordy Smith emerges victor at Battle of Bells Beach
Jordy Smith took out the prize, while Australian surfer Mick Fanning and World Champion John John Florence fell short.
But Florence latched onto the medium-sized offering and went aerial - and not for the first time on the day – into a tail-drifting snap, ensuring him the lead.
It scored him a 7.47 – not his highest heat of the round but enough to knock out the Australia's last remaining hope. The Hawaiian even rode the wave hard to the beach when he could afford to back off.
"In hindsight I would have went that wave and kept him off, and he would never have caught another wave," Fanning mused.
"But, as I said, I thought I saw sets coming around the point. They just didn't really materialise into anything."
Fanning, however, wasn't labouring the moment. He admits he's now striving for a relaxed mindset to surfing in 2017, an approach he adopted for Bells, the third leg of the Australian chapter on the world tour.
Of course, it's his first full year on the tour since his near miss with a shark at Jeffreys Bay in South Africa two years ago.
"At the start of the year I was just trying to do the same things that I've done before, and it just wasn't feeling right," Fanning said.
"It felt like I was really forcing it.
"This event I just changed it all up – went really relaxed. It felt way better. It felt like I had more energy out in the water.
"It felt like I was just free-surfing, which was fun."
Florence's late aerial heroics were some of the highlights on a jam-packed day at Bells Beach that began not long after 7am, before being momentarily stopped by heavy fog, and finished close to sunset.
In a dramatic three-man heat with Fanning and Sebastian Zietz, a highly-amped Fanning appeared to have the win and direct passage to the quarters with a combined score of 18.86.
But Florence, needing two high-scoring waves to overtake Fanning, finished with style. First came a 9.57 score from the Hawaiian, then a desperate, driving effort topped with a gravity-defying alley-oop that had the large crowd roaring and the scoreboard showing 9.97.
For Fanning, who first rang the bell in 2001, Florence's twin aerial displays on Wednesday were another reminder of the audacity of youth.
"I told him before we paddled out – 'you're not allowed to do airs', but he didn't listen to me," Fanning said.
"But when you're going up against the world champ – in the form he's in at the moment, he's incredible.
"Back in the day there were one or two guys that could do rotors, like big airs, on nothing," he said.
"Now they just do it on a dime.
"It's so freakish, but that's the norm now. My old bones and old ankles can't really do that so I just stick to the face.
"That's the freak of John John Florence – he's an incredible athlete, an incredible talent.
"You can't do anything but just applaud it, really."
.@johnjohnflorenc takes the win over @Mick_Fanning in #RipCurlPro #BellsBeach Quarterfinal 2 👉 https://t.co/99mkLAnxRY pic.twitter.com/JtSvdCyuZ9
— World Surf League (@wsl) April 19, 2017
WOW @johnjohnflorenc #RipCurlPro #BellsBeach pic.twitter.com/qved1FOqyZ
— World Surf League (@wsl) 18 April 2017