Mick Fanning’s career reads like the biography of someone who lived several lifetimes — three world titles, 22 Championship Tour victories, career-threatening injuries, a televised shark attack, and enough personal tragedy to break almost anyone.
A new 60 Minutes Australia profile revisits that extraordinary life, including the night Fanning effectively cheated death at 17. In 1998, he turned down a ride home from a party and walked instead. The car later crashed into a tree, killing his 20-year-old brother Sean and close friend Joel Green. Fanning was left to tell his family. “I locked myself in my room and didn’t leave it for a week,” he later recalled.
Surfing became an outlet. Even after tearing his hamstring from the bone in 2004, Fanning returned stronger, eventually winning world titles in 2007, 2009 and 2013.
Then came 2015.
During the J-Bay Open final in South Africa, a shark attacked Fanning on live television. “I was waiting for the teeth to come at me,” he said afterward. “I punched it in the back.”
Months later, while chasing a fourth world title at Pipeline, Fanning learned that his eldest brother Peter had died in his sleep from a heart condition. He paddled out anyway.
“The last words that I spoke to Pete was him telling me how proud he was and how he just loved watching me surf,” Fanning explained. “So I was like, ‘Yeah, we’re on. Let’s go do this.’”
Related: Mick Fanning Surfing with His Son Is Pure Joy (Video)
He added at the time: “Today was one of the most challenging days of my life, but I knew I could find the strength… because that’s what Pete would want.”
Years later, he admitted that brutal stretch left him “totally empty.”
“What else?” Fanning remembered thinking. “What else can you take in a year?”
In 2024, Fanning lost his third brother, Edward, after complications from an infected wound suffered in Madagascar. His father, John, died earlier this year.
Yet Fanning’s message today is less about tragedy than what comes afterward.
“You’ve only got one shot at life,” he recently said. “You might as well give it all you’ve got.”
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