EXCLUSIVE: Beautiful meaning behind Aussie surfing gun Jack Robinson's 'atomic heart' tattoo

In the south of Brazil last year, at famous surf spot Florianópolis, Jack Robinson had a sketch of tattoo ink crafted on his left arm.

"First one, bro," the Australian surfer, chatting to Wide World of Sports, whispers with his easy, infectious smile.

Robinson's first tattoo, which he describes as an "atomic heart", says a lot about the surreal life he's lived, which this week takes another dreamy turn as he makes his Olympic debut on Sunday morning (AEST).

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The 26-year-old is one of four Australians taking on the formidable Teahupo'o break in French Polynesia, along with Ethan Ewing, Tyler Wright and Molly Picklum.

Robinson was introduced to surfing by his dad Trevor on the beaches of Perth at the age of three.

A couple of years later, his family moved to Margaret River, one of the stops on the World Surf League's Championship Tour calendar, and the youngster was suddenly staring down the eye of one huge wave after another.

By the age of 11, he was surfing Hawaii's mighty Banzai Pipeline, another Championship Tour location, notorious for massive swells and barrelling waves that break on a shallow reef.

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He was not yet a teenager when he was snapped up by Quiksilver, which took him to surf G-Land on the Indonesian coast of East Java, home to some of the longest barrels in the world.

Robinson, with an unmissable blonde bowl cut, was one of three prodigious surfers swept up by Quiksilver, along with Japan's Kanoa Igarashi and Italy's Leonardo Fioravanti. As a Quiksilver-sponsored trio, they became the face of the next generation of surfing stardom.

Featuring on a front cover of the Weekend Australian magazine, Robinson was dubbed the next Kelly Slater.

The first 26 years of his life have encountered some bumps — he didn't qualify for the Championship Tour until 2019, which was later than his soaring potential had indicated, and has had some tough times mentally — but his life has largely been defined by the highs.

That's what makes his "atomic heart" tattoo so fitting.

"The heart is the only muscle in the whole body where the energy keeps flowing," he says softly.

"It never gets cancer, the heart. It never stops. Energy.

"I get a great feeling from the heart. When you feel things, you feel them from the heart ... and I feel like if you have gratitude and love in her heart, it attracts good things."

Next to the heart is the letter "J", meaning his wife Julia, a Brazilian model, as well as the word "Zen", the name of their only child.

"I want to have my closest people connected to the heart," Robinson says, smiling with warmth.

"I feel like I feel close to them with this.

"The tattoo is something meaningful ... It's been quite the journey and I'm still pretty young."

Surfing only became an Olympic sport in Tokyo three years ago, but as a kid, Robinson would picture himself competing at the Olympics.

"When I used to watch Usain Bolt and all these guys, all my favourite athletes, at like seven, eight years old, even though surfing wasn't in the Olympics, I was like, 'I'm going to be there one day just in the Olympics'," he says.

"It was just a thought. I was already a surfer and I was like, 'I'm going to the Olympics, it's already a part of me'."

Robinson is placed third, and is the highest-ranked Australian, in this season's Championship Tour rankings.

The tour last stopped in the Brazilian city of Saquarema for the Rio Pro. Next up is a trip to Cloudbreak in Fiji, on the other side of the Olympics.

Robinson wants to win Olympic gold and his maiden world title before the year is out.

"I'm on my way, I'm on the path," he says, whispering with a quiet conviction.

"I need to win a world title and the Olympics. It's one of the goals, one of the dreams. Just to do it would be incredible."