Julian Wilson, rib-breaker (srsly) at Pipeline, Hawaii

Yesterday The Pipeline absolutely lit up, as you’ve already seen here. It was a big west swell, the kind where the best ones look like closeouts, and there were no new friends in the lineup – with the final world tour event having wrapped at this very spot last week, a lot of pros had bounced outta Honolulu airport, but those who stuck around got to share this with locals like Jamie O, John John Florence and more.

Julian Wilson knows as well as anyone that at Pipe, you’ve gotta commit. So when he committed to this wave and then realised it wasn’t working out, he fell outta the sky and, unfortunately, landed sideways with nothing to break the fall but the skeletal cage that protects his vital organs. After falling from a certain height, water can become like concrete. As you’ll see in the bottom end of the sequence, Mr Wilson landed directly on his side.

*Turns out what were originally thought to be broken ribs are just really, really, really sore ribs that felt broken and would’ve been assumed by anyone watching the wipeout to be broken.