“Put Your Foot in the Ring”: Decorated WSL Surfer Reflects on His Maiden Victory After a Horrifying Injury

From relearning how to walk, to winning at Quicksilver Pro Gold Coast, Owen Wright is synonymous with the never giving up spirit. The 33-year-old surfer is famous for his courageous comeback after a life-threatening brain injury in 2015. Now, as the four-time WSL champion is set to conclude his journey in the sport at the upcoming Rip Curl Pro, he revisited his maiden victory, after the horrifying injury, in a recent interview.

On 3 April 2023, Olympic medalist and surfer, Owen Wright talked about the incident that completely changed his perspective towards surfing in an interview with The Sidney Morning Herald.

Owen Wright’s surfing victory taught him an important lesson

Wright is on the last walk of his surfing career. He recently recalled in the interview with the Sidney Morning Herald,“I always draw back to the time when I was coming back from my head injury, I was barely surfing, and I won the first event back.” In 2015, Wright experienced a gut-wrenching head injury after being wiped out by a 4 to 5-meter wave at Hawaii’s Pipeline. However, Wright was not ready to leave his surfing career. Hence, after taking a year of therapy, the surfer rebooted his career in the sport.

Defying all the odds, the Australian surfer bounced back with a significant victory in 2017. He won the World Surfing League Quicksilver Pro Gold Coast at Snappers Rocks. Wright defeated his best friend, Matt Wilkinson, at the finals and emerged as the new champion.

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Remembering his first victory after an intense injury, Wright expressed, “Sometimes you’ve just got to show up, put the rashie on, put your foot in the ring, and you never know what can happen in surfing.”

The Aussie surfer did not overthink the chances of getting injured again. Nevertheless, after his victory at Snapper Rocks, Wright had another historic win. He won the first-ever bronze medal in surfing for Australia, at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

A throwback to Owen Wright’s injury

Australian surfer Owen Wright ranked fifth in the world before he went through his life’s most devastating injury, a few days before the end-of-season finale in Hawaii Pipeline in 2015. Following a wipeout, Wright experienced blood effusion in the brain, resulting in a serious injury that made it hard to stabilize him for the next three weeks. Moreover, as an effect of the concussion, the surfer had to suffer several consequences like- inability to walk, slowed speech, anxiety, and headaches. Making his brain function, became Wright’s biggest challenge.

For months, Wright was in rehabilitation, being treated by neurologists and psychologists. After getting back to normalcy, the surfer couldn’t turn away his calling for the waves. However, he had to learn surfing all over again to restart his career.

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Indeed, Wright rose like a phoenix. However, now the retiring surfer has decided to bid surfing goodbye. He’s now gearing up for his final competitive performance at the Rip Curl Pro, being held from 4 April to 14 April.