John John Florence, on the fritz but still electrified, Gold Coast

This is John John’s Florence room at Rainbow Beach Resort. He’s sitting in his pop-up editing suite, where he’s surrounded himself with cameras and the means to play around with footage. But this room has just become very well-placed. Why? Because it doesn’t have ocean views. John’s been spending quite a lot time in here since he injured himself in the expression session of the Quik Pro three days ago. “Oh, I can’t even look out there,” John said this afternoon, as waves peeled down the point at Rainbow Bay. This is his final night before heading back to mainland USA. “It’s too much to bear. I drove past Kirra before and there were these tiny little spinning tubes and I couldn’t take it.”

Tomorrow at 10.30am he’ll board a plane from Brisbane to LAX and will drive straight into the Newport suite of Dr Warren Kramer, orthopaedic surgeon to the stars. He’s wary to commit to saying what the injury is but Dr Kramer told him that since it’s not black or blue, John shouldn’t even think about surgery. Doctors in Australia have been suggesting a rubber screw through his ankle to hold it in place. “A rubber screw!” balks John. “My mom says the doctors are like they’re from the 70s!”

John will spend a week staying with Pat O’Connell doing rehab on his ankle before heading back to Hawaii and then hopefully into the Rip Curl Pro at Bells. But, he seems more bummed about missing going to West Australia than anything associated with a title race. “I love Western Australia! I’m so bummed I don’t get to go to Margarets. The wind blows into the rights and it’s so good for airs. And there are just so many good slabs.”

This afternoon, when asked about John’s absence from the event, Kelly Slater said: “There’s gonna be a lot of injuries, I think, and they’re gonna determine world champions. For the next 10 years you can expect John John and Medina to be in the world title talk every time, but who’s gonna hurt themselves more doing airs, y’know?”

Kelly then added: “It’s unfortunate for those guys, all eyes are on those two coming into this event. Everyone’s saying, “Who’s gonna be the next world champ? Medina or John John?” So it’s ironic that they’re both hurt in the ankle. They’re gonna have to be careful of that for the next 20 years.”

So, what’s John think about that? “You can’t get bummed about it. These things happen with airs. It’s kinda when as opposed to if.”