Julian Wilson

Fast Facts 

Sport: Surfing 
Event: Shortboard Men
Olympic History: Tokyo 2020
Year Born: 1988
Born: Nambour, QLD

About Julian

Mateship is one of the first things that spring to mind about Julian Wilson after he paddled towards a shark and not away from it to help his friend Mick Fanning.

The famous incident in the final of the 2015 Jeffreys Bay event in South Africa thankfully saw both Australian surfers rescued by jet ski after a shark lunged at Mick.

“I was like, 'I’ve got a board, if I can get there I can stab it or whatever. I’ve got a weapon’," Julian said.

Mick won’t ever be forgetting it, that’s a certainty.

“I can never repay him for that courage,” Mick said. “I’ll always have his back 100 percent in any situation. That’s the only thing I can do for him.”

It shows Julian is not afraid of the big, the bad and the bold that Mother Nature can throw at surfers.

He grabbed a 2014 Pipeline Masters win at one of the gnarliest breaks in the world, and over one of the hardest men to beat in Brazil’s Gabriel Medina.

A 2007 ‘Rookie of the Year’ in his World Championship Tour (WCT) debut that year, Julian is known for power and grace on a wave as well as some electric aerial manoeuvres. That all featured prominently in winning the International Surfing Association World Junior Champion crown in 2006.

Julian took a ‘gap year’ in 2010 to make his own documentary film ‘Scratching the Surface’ which takes viewers on a year-long journey around key world surfing spots.

Movies are in Julian’s blood. In 2008 he became the youngest recipient of the Surfer Poll award for ‘Best Performance of the Year’ for his starring role in the acclaimed video ‘Young Guns III’.

He was runner-up in the 2018 WCT title race - to Medina - and is also a prestigious Triple Crown winner in 2014 with the best results in the last three Hawaiian events of the season: Haleiwa, Sunset, and Pipeline.

Leading up to Tokyo 2020 Julian announced his hiatus from the World Championship Tour. He went into his round three heat in Japan against two-time world champion Gabriel Medina, with both surfers trading off a series of exciting manoeuvres until the dying seconds of the 30-minute affair.

Julian, needing a close to excellent score to win, performed a critical air-reverse into a below sea-level section that was rewarded with a lower-than-expected 6.83 wave score. Medina took the heat victory.