Mick Fanning fought back tears just hours after learning of his brother's death while pushing for a fourth world surfing title.
Despite waking up to hear his older brother, Peter, had died in his sleep, the Aussie displayed incredible levels of perseverance to win through his third and fourth round heats at the famed Pipeline Masters in Hawaii on Thursday.
"It's been a huge day, I've just got some personal stuff going on at home," he said in an emotional interview after his heat.
"It's kind of heavy to talk about right now. I don't know, I'm just cruising, and just trying to live."
Peter's death was confirmed by Fanning's Rip Curl team earlier on Friday, who declined to make any further comment.
It is believed 43-year-old Peter, who has three children, had been staying at his brother's Queensland home following his recent divorce.
Somehow, Fanning remained at his brilliant best to keep his title hopes afloat.
Needing to hold out a number of other contenders at the season-ending at the Banzai Pipeline, Fanning defeated local Jamie O'Brien with an opening-wave score of 8.47, before receiving a warm embrace from his mother before leaving the water.
Just hours later he was back to defeat 11-time world champion Kelly Slater and red-hot Hawaiian John John Florence, in the highest-scoring heat of the day.
He will need to defeat Slater again in a must-win quarter-final on Friday, but it was his bravery in the circumstances on Thursday that left fans in admiration.
Not that the fighting spirit is anything new to Fanning though.
In 1998, he not only lost his brother and close friend in a car accident, but somehow summoned the courage to deliver the news to the remainder of his family after police pulled him over to notify him of the crash.
"Afterwards, I wasn't allowed to go down to the crash site," he wrote in his book, Surf For Your Life, in 2009.
"I was trying to sneak out, because I wanted to go and see the tree they'd hit, but no one would let me until the car had been removed.
"I didn't surf either. I just sat in my room. I stayed there for four days."
Even reaching the season-ending event this year has been a matter of physical and mental fortitude.
In July he was forced to kick and punch away a shark as it began to attack him while competing at J-Bay in South Africa.
All the while, the real-life drama was being beamed live back to his mother, Elizabeth Osbourne, in Australia, who feared she was about to lose another child.
"I thought, the universe can't be this cruel," she told 60 Minutes in August.
"And it also makes me think of the years we've had without Sean and how we really stuck together during that time and how beautiful it's been.
"Only the one thing about our family now, especially me, is that I'm much more anxious."
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