“It’s a wave of consequence, so I’m not going to say that I’m not scared, I am.”
The surf world held its collective breath, two weeks ago, when Australia’s Tyler Wright withdrew from the Brazil leg of the World Surf League’s Championship Tour citing an “unspecified injury.” The two-time world champion, currently tenth in the world, has overcome almost too many obstacles to count on her professional surf journey including perpetual suffocation, African flu which led to post-viral syndrome, a father who forced her to surf and carrying the burden of being the only openly gay surfer at the highest levels of competition to name but a very few.
Her missing the Vivo Rio Pro serious in and of itself made much more extreme in light of the upcoming Olympic Games which will be contested, for surfers, in Tahiti.
Surfing Australia put a brave face on the situation, releasing a statement reading, “Tyler has been advised by her doctors and specialists that she needs some treatment and would prefer her sitting out Brazil. Tyler will be 100% ready for the Olympics.”
Though in a sign of possible doubt, Tyler Wright maybe being 98% ready for the Olympics, the team readied Sally Fitzgibbons as replacement.
Well, hours ago, Wright revealed the horror diagnosis that kept her out of Brazil.
Balance issues.
No further details were given, whether it is benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, vestibular neuritis, Meniere’s disease or Ramsay Hunt syndrome, for example, but brave Wright seems to be sallying forth telling the Guardian that it was a “hard call” to make heading to Teahupo’o but that she’s excited and ready.
“It’s a wave of consequence, so I’m not going to say that I’m not scared, I am,” she declared. “I’ve done a lot in the last couple of years to sit with that, but at the same time I don’t think it’s that complicated either; you either go or you don’t, and you make that decision in the moment.”
Wright is not a favorite, by the numbers, but her hero’s journey will, no doubt, inspire and isn’t that what the Olympics is really about?
Very exciting.
I will, of course, be covering all the action from ground zero nearly 10,000 miles away in Paris and will be certain to keep abreast of any and all developments as opening day draws near.
Médicalement miraculeux.
