Johnny-Boy Florence, Log Cabins, Hawaii

Photog Jimmy Wilson’s still shooting through a borrowed lens. His house on the North Shore was broken into last week and the thieves scored some top-quality camera equipment. That hasn’t stopped him gettin’ it done though. Jimmy’s got a keen eye for surfing technicalities. So keen, in fact, that he’s ultra-pedantic when it comes to correctly labelling manoeuvres and spotting potential. He even wrote us a tasty little piece for our hard-cover book (due out sooner than y’think), which outlines every specific grab variation as performed by Eric Geiselman, Kolohe Andino, Adam Melling, Bruce Irons and Julian Wilson. So when Jimmy says a young gun is “really, really good” y’know the kid’s flairing. The above sequence of Johnny-Boy Florence came after he’d nailed a rodeo on one wave, a backside air-reverse on another and what Jimmy described as “The best grab-rail cutty I’ve seen since I’ve been in Hawaii.” Kid also made a semis berth at the O’Neill World Cup of Surfing, Sunset Beach, winning his quarter-final heat over tour veterans Taylor Knox and Joel Parkinson, as well as eventual contest-winner Raoni Monteiro. John crumbled in the semi, though it mighta been a different story had the waves been more consistent. Watch out for Hawaii’s newest Johnny-Boy in the future.