So, let’s build up this surfing gold medal bout as the Teahupo’o swell does the same - some genuinely tasty barrels ploughing through in the bronze medal heats as Brazil’s Gabriel Medina and Frenchwoman Johanne Defay claimed respective third place finishes.

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Australian Jack Robinson is one of the best in the world and has been for the past three years - placing in the top five despite injury battles including a bout of long-term appendicitis that he surfed throughout much of 2022 with.

He’s been on the radar of surfing types from the age of 12 - dubbed the potential “Phar Lap of Australian surfing” by his own dad Trevor and “the next Kelly Slater”, pressure he understandably struggled with at times growing up.

He eventually took charge of his own career and management and is now on the verge of a gold medal at Teahupo’o, a wave he knows well and claimed a thrilling championship win at last year.

In his way, local boy Kauli Vaast - arguably the only surfer in this event who knows this wave better than Robinson. Vaast is 22, a Tahitian favourite and first surfed ‘the place of skulls’ at the age of eight.

He’s also got several screws loose given the six to eight metre rides that populate his Instagram and YouTube packages. He’s also been known to catch his dinner mid-surf, so there’s that.

Robinson is the favourite with the bookies, but only just, and this one could go either way. They’ll hit the water at 10:15am AEST, with the women’s final between Hawaiian Caroline Marks and Brazilian Tatiana Weston-Webb afterwards.