Page 128 of Ride the Wave

‘So are you.’

But he looked down at the floor.

I worry that the showdown with his mum affected him more than he’s let on. It makes me even angrier at her that she might have dented his confidence midway through the biggest performance of his life. When it comes to Michelle, it’s hard for me to say the right thing when Leo has made it clear that he doesn’t want to talk about her anymore – he said he’s drawn a line under it, that he only wants to focus on the competition.

‘I know now who I don’t need, and who I do,’ he said to me in bed last night, nudging my nose with his. ‘I don’t need her support to know I can do this.’

Which is great, but in reality, it’s always harder to let go.

And when Antoine takes the lead early on in the heat, coming in with good momentum while Leo has a slower start, I worry that he’s lost the playful spirit he’s found here over the past week. The first wave he takes, he can’t quite get ahead of it, the wave sectioning up – when it breaks unevenly ahead of itself – and his ride is cut short. As he disappears under the white foam, I remain hopeful. It was only the first one. But his next attempt isn’t much better – he does nicely, but there’s little flair to his turns and carves. He seems stiffer, pushing hard through the bumps on the face of the waves. The air feels heavier today, echoing Leo’s state of mind.

‘Come on,’ I mumble, urging him to find the fight within.

The clock is ticking down to that siren that signals the end of the heat.

He needs one good wave, I convince myself, to get back on track. He needs the water to work with him today, give him a little boost. He needs to remember that it doesn’t matter what came before here at Bells Beach; what matters is that he’s here now. And I hope he knows that he’s not a lone wolf; he never has been. Even if his mum didn’t have his back, his dad has been his number-one fan since the first time he got on a board. Marina looks up to him as a surfer and as a friend, as do all of his surfer buddies back in Burgau. Even Ethan Anderson was happy to concede that he was better than him back in that video when they were groms – he points out how amazing Leo is to watch on the water.

He needs a reminder of that.

He needs a reminder of that.

Without a moment to lose, I jump up to my feet and cup my hands round my mouth in an effort to carry my voice further, shouting his name and cheering: ‘Go on Leo!’

It’s a quiet moment in the heat, both of the surfers waiting in the water for the next set. Until my interruption, the beach was in a chilled state of spectators chatting.

‘Go on Leo!’ I repeat at the top of my lungs, clapping loudly. ‘You’ve got this!’

He’s looking out to the ocean, his back turned to the beach, but I see his head turn just a tiny bit. The crowd at Bells Beach is so great that instead of my spontaneous lone cheer being met by silent, sneering judgement, everyone else starts joining in. The beach erupts with support. They’re cheering both surfers, Antoine getting as much love as Leo, a wave of whoops and whistles carrying across the water to the two of them.

As the cheer slowly dies down, I settle back on my blanket, my heart hammering with the rush of being centre stage. Leo might not have known what just happened, he might not realise that it was his name that was cheered first – but that noise from the crowd on the shore will have carried out to him and he’ll know that my voice was somewhere there amongst the others, willing him to believe in himself.

That has to mean something.

Leo uses his priority to take the next wave that comes in and this time, he comes at it with aggression, power and confidence. He has a whole new energy. His first swoop across the face of the wall draws a gasp from the audience, it’s so good, before he strings together a clean sequence of beautiful turns, drawing everything he can from the wave right along to the inside where he springs from the board into the foam. He comes up from the water grinning.

I sigh with relief, breaking into a smile.

‘Leo Silva is back, baby,’ I whisper into the wind.

*

SEMIFINALSHeat 1, Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach Ethan Anderson vs Jude Garcia AUS USA

SEMIFINALSHeat 2, Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach Yazid Bayu vs Leo Silva INA AUS

After a two-day delay due to on-shore winds and a diminishing swell, the day of the Semifinals has arrived. I’m as pleased as Leo that the contest is back up and running, having had to put up with his pumped-up energy for the last couple of days, fresh off his Quarterfinal win, feeling excited to keep up the momentum. The surf world has been buzzing about the way he stole the show right at the end from Antoine Lambert, whose exit interview was so gushing about Leo, it almost made me cry.

‘If you’re going to lose, lose to one of the greatest surfers in the world.’ Antoine shrugged with a smile when the interviewer asked him how it felt to exit the competition.

Today, Leo faces Indonesian Yazid Bayu, who Adriano tells me is a high-ranking, well-rounded surfer with a smooth, stylish technique; he’s also a popular showman, an entertainer who feeds off a good crowd. Surf talent aside, that can be intimidating.

The conditions are good, the waves looking big during Leo’s warm up.

‘How do you think Leo looks?’ I ask Adriano from the steps.

Adriano watches on with a pensive expression, his eyebrows knitted together. He takes so long to answer, I wonder whether he was too focused on the warm-up to hear the question, but I don’t bother repeating it, not wanting to interrupt his analysis.

But suddenly, he mumbles something.

---