One-armed Hawaiian wildcard surfer Bethany Hamilton will aim to return to her normal nomadic lifestyle after her dream run at the Fiji Pro came to an end in the semi-finals on Tuesday.
Hamilton shocked the field at Cloudbreak, beating three Australians before her streak finally came to an end in the semi-finals against the competition's eventual winner, France's Johanne Defay.
But Hamilton, who lost her arm to a shark attack at age 13 in 2003, said she had no plans to abandon her current set up to become a regular on the tour.
"I'm going to be travelling all summer," she said.
"Just surfing, going to certain waves that I just want to perform well and surf and have fun with."
An in-and-out competitor in the world league, her personal-best third place in Fiji was just her sixth appearance on the tour since she debuted in 2009.
The mother-of-one, who also finished third on reality TV show The Amazing Race in 2014, began her scintillating run when she knocked out then-world ratings leader Tyler Wright in the second round.
Wright's loss consigned the Australian to her worst result of the season, and led to her being overtaken by Courtney Conlogue of the United States on the leaderboard.
Hamilton, 26, then defeated six-time Australian world champion Stephanie Gilmore in the third round on Monday, before making it the Aussie trifecta when she beat Nikki Van Dijk by a meagre 1.07 points in the quarter-final on Tuesday.
"It was like a dream competing in the Fiji Pro, and this is like a dream come true," Hamilton said.
Australia's 2009 world junior champion Laura Enever and two-time Fiji Pro winner Sally Fitzgibbons then followed Van Dijk out the door in their quarter-finals, dumped out of the competition by Hawaiian Carissa Moore and South African Bianca Buitendag respectively.
Defay then took her momentum from the 6.41-point win over Hamilton in the semi-final to beat three-time world champion Moore in the final, banking an early ride of 8.67 to gain an upper-hand she never released as she went on to win by a margin of 2.76.
Share
