Words and photos: Peter ‘Joli’ Wilson
You could be forgiven if you thought Glenn ‘Mirco’ Hall was having a little snooze here but the result of this was nearly a year out of the water. Micro didn’t know at this stage but his horrific wipeout on the Restaurants Reef had literally broken his back! It was a heat against Jordy Smith as the tide was going low – the worst time to be surfing over the shallow, razor-sharp coral at Restaurants. He’d taken off on a smallish wave and was trying to race a dredging section when he was drawn up the face, flipped over before being bent over backwards on a coral head. I think ‘scorpion’ was the term.
I can remember Micro coming up after the wipeout and trying to grab his board and paddle back into the line up but he was in too much pain. Even when the Water Patrol tried to pick him up, they thought he was trying to get back to the take off zone but he convinced them he needed to go to the beach.
Micro was in a lot of pain and when he tried to walk up the beach, brushing off a persistent Webcast crew trying to get an interview, he collapsed in front of them. He was helicoptered off the island and Medivac’d back to Australia. Ace Buchan, who’d been knocked out of the contest went with him, both flying home in a private jet – Ace enjoying the view and Micro flat on his back being attended to by medical staff.
The final diagnosis: a number of bones broken around the base of his spine and nearly a year before he was able to compete again.
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