Parko Rolls To Second Victory Of 2009
by Sean Doherty

It’s 6.10am in the Winkipop car park. From east to west it’s orange to pink to blue to black to smoking. Adam Robertson is surveying the vista looking south across Bells Beach and he likes what he sees. It’s six foot and pretty well as good as it can get. Even for a guy like Robbo, who has surfed this most famous of surfing arenas under every one of it’s several thousand guises, he knows today holds something a little special.

Robbo has seen a lot of the local pre-dawn sky lately. Back in early January, at 6.10am and without another soul on Jan Juc beach apart from his coach, Graeme “Gally” Galbraith, Robbo is out there surfing heat drills on his own. Regarded as the most gutless beach in the area, Juc is two foot and as far from the pro surfing dream as you can get. It is, however, just like the waves he’s about to encounter on the World Qualifying Series. After years of WQS toil and brief flirtations with the big time, the hirsute journeyman realises it’s a now or never kinda deal if he’s ever going to make the Dream Tour. 

Robbo surfed the final at Bells today in wetsuits he’d traded from the guys at Rip Curl for a case of Boags Pure Blonde beer, legal tender round these parts. His boards remained stark white and stickerless. He’s currently number 76 on the WQS and he drives a dusty old 4WD that, unlike some of his competitors off-road monsters, actually does off-road miles. The WQS can kill a man, but it hasn’t killed Robbo yet.

Three months after that morning on Jan Juc beach and Robbo’s surfing in front of a real and virtual audience of millions, the vast bulk of whom are cheering him on. It’s a fitting reward for a guy whose good heart and humble demeanour has survived quite a few years of disappointment on tour. He’s surfing against a guy who had similar realisations to him back in January -  only Joel Parkinson’s ambitions are on a far bigger stage than Robbo’s.

You would have got good odds on picking a Joel Parkinson/Adam Robertson final at the start of the event, even if the odds on Joel winning the whole thing were reasonably skinny. Joel had worked his way through a wave-starved scrap with CJ in the quarters today, before finding rhythm in his semi against Jordy Smith. Robbo had beaten Hawaiians Kekoa Bacalso and Fred Patacchia with better flow and better knowledge of what made Bells tick. He was the first Victorian to ever make the Bells final.

Joel rarely looked like losing today. His forehand swoop was the barometer of how hard he is going out there, and whenever he got in strife out there he’d just drive harder into that extended front leg, the parabolic arc would tighten, and the scores would drop in like a slot machine. The judges are seeing it.

Parko’s win was a popular one. He had 44 text messages on his phone

within an hour of winning.

“What do I do? Hit delete?”

The one he read was from a mate of his back home who works in the mines.

“Me mate came up to me last week and gave me a can of Brasso so I could polish the bell when I won it. This is what he wrote.”

Some say it was talent,
Some say it was arse,
But Parko’s flying home
With a bell made of brass.

If you want any portal into the mindset of the runaway world number one, look no further than his celebrations.

There were none.

He drove home from Bells Beach to his rented pad in Torquay, packed up his Audi courtesy car, loaded in Monica and the kids, and was off to Melbourne airport within two hours.

Tonight there will be no standing on bars. No spewing in the dunny at 9pm like after his Gold Coast win. Tomorrow morning he’s on a plane. To Fiji. With three weeks until Teahupoo, Joel is trading the cold and “fluffy” reefs [Joel’s description] of southern Australia for the tropical and altogether more consequential reefs of the South Pacific. But unlike his good mate Mick Fanning, who unlocked the secret to his world title by flying to Tahiti a month early in 2007 on his way to making the final, Joel’s plane is only getting as far as Fiji. He’s taking Mon and the kids to Tavarua for a week, with the plan to stick his bum in the wall of a few lefts at Cloudbreak, and maybe just make a dent in the local yellowfin population while he’s at it.

RIP CURL PRO BELLS BEACH FINAL RESULTS:
1 – Joel Parkinson (AUS) 17.40
2 – Adam Robertson (AUS) 13.37

RIP CURL PRO BELLS BEACH SEMIFINAL RESULTS:
SF 1: Joel Parkinson (AUS) 16.33 def. Jordy Smith (ZAF) 15.24
SF 2: Adam Robertson (AUS) 13.87 def. Fred Patacchia (HAW) 12.73

RIP CURL PRO BELLS BEACH QUARTERFINAL RESULTS:
QF 1: Joel Parkinson (AUS) 13.17 def. C.J. Hobgood (USA) 8.66
QF 2: Jordy Smith (ZAF) 15.50 def. Mick Fanning (AUS) 15.16
QF 3: Adam Robertson (AUS) 14.26 def. Kekoa Bacalso (HAW) 12.33
QF 4: Fredrick Patacchia (HAW) 14.13 def. Kieren Perrow (AUS) 12.17