Why — and How — to Watch Women’s Surfing in the Olympics (Hint: Because These Women Are Badass!)
Part 1: What Is Really Happening in the Water?
“No one wants to watch surfing in the Olympics, because no one really surfs.”
This my dad told me on a recent call, when I was bragging about how his granddaughter was ripping, what surfing teaches you, and how excited I was that surfing was finally an Olympic sport.
I could hear the scoff in his “that is final” voice, the one I know ends conversations. I have lived long enough to know I can’t change his mind, but it did make me wonder, what ARE people thinking about surfing in the Olympics, if they think about it all?
Do women, especially, know that in 2020, pro-women surfers were finally paid equal to men, and that the men in the sport vocally supported them?
Do they understand how badass these athletes are? Not just the Olympians, but all the pros. Do they know anything about Stephanie Gilmore, the smiling assassin, a 7-time world-champion Aussie shredder with a style so smooth it looks like buttah, or Keala Kennelly, who charges 50 foot — that’s five stories y’all — waves. Do they know Hawaiian prodigy Carissa Moore, 4-time world champion, Glamour Woman of the Year, National Geographic Adventurer of the year, the youngest person — male or female — to ever win a world title? Or hard charger Caroline Marks who threatened the whole World Title Race in her Rookie Year and qualified for the Olympics at 17?
Will they pause just for a moment to watch these women slice up a world-class wave before flipping back to diving, hurdles and gymnastics?
Okay, you might have guessed, I surf. I started at 36 years old after a divorce, a family death and a breakdown, in the frigid, terrifying waters of northern California. Surfing caught hold of me, toppled and churned me, lifted me, breathed life into me, transformed my life in every possible way, and has left me frothing still after almost two decades. So I MIGHT be a little extra stoked.
But I was always just a soul surfer. I certainly never competed, and had rarely seen competitive surfing, until 2019, when I stumbled upon the final stop in the women’s World Championship Tour on Maui, and recognized what amazing ATHLETES these people are, and how the broadcast of surfing had evolved to make it more accessible to the spectator. The World Surf League (WSL) has made a slew of changes in the last few years to explain to viewers what they’re watching, to drill down into the nuances of scoring, much like Olympics announcers have done for figure skating. (No one would know the difference between a triple axel and a triple toe loop without being guided through the process.) And it’s exciting and addicting to watch!
But the WSL is still mostly reaching surfers, and after my dad’s comment, I realized that surfing, as glorious, poetic, hypnotic and otherworldly as it may seem, is impossible to understand without context.
It is not just because people don’t surf that they may not watch it. Very few people do gymnastics, or dive, or pole vault. Even fewer compete at an elite level, enabling them to grasp the subtleties of scoring. But it’s easier to understand what is at stake with these sports, because we understand the basic laws of gravity, the natural bend of the human body, the force it takes to spring to impossible heights, and the reasonable limitations of friction.
Surfing takes place in a world most people have never even entered — the ocean. And even those who may have ventured into the beckoning sea have rarely encountered the swirling, shifting, unpredictable environment once their feet no longer touch the earth.
Of those who have, while they may have felt the rise and fall as the waves move from swell to breaking crests, felt the majesty and buoyancy of salt water, few have a sense of what it feels like to fly along an open face, held by a force that confounds gravity, or to freefall from the height of a ten-foot building, leashed to a board with sharp points on its tip and bottom.
They probably have not felt the lashing of the lip grinding their bodies into the sandbar, or the jagged, cut-inducing reef, or felt the tailing end of breath as it evaporates underwater. If they have, they still tell those stories at family gatherings and high school reunions, with a wild look in their eyes.
Surfing, from the camera’s view, captures the imagination: the grace of it, the power, the speed, the iconic image of mermaids and mermen working in rhythm with the force of wind and water.
But while the “why” of watching surfing as an art form, even for a few moments, is easy to understand, the “what” of it (how to understand it) requires more explanation. Because to understand surfing as a sport, to root for a surfer, to celebrate their victories and wince at their failures, requires some knowledge of WHAT IS AT STAKE. The surfer faces not just their opponent, not just their own skill and limitations, but the living, changing, unpredictable, sometimes punishing, always transformative force of nature.
Full disclosure: if it’s not clear already, I have an agenda! In the following 6 parts of this series, I aim to unpack what you are actually watching, why it is so unfathomably difficult and badass, and to encourage a rising tide (sorry, couldn’t help it!) of spectators to cheer for these indomitable world-class athletes. I hope you will tune in not just to the Olympics, but to broadcasts of women shredding waves across the world as they compete on the World Championship Tour (WCT) and World Qualifying Series (WQS) of the World Surf League (WSL).
Links to the Full Series:
Part 2: What’s at Stake — Navigating the Ocean — The Wipeout
Part 3: What’s at Stake — Navigating the Ocean — The Paddle Out
Part 4: What’s at Stake — The Wave Itself
Part 5: What’s at Stake — The Surfer
Sheila Gallien is a writer, channel, conscious creativity coach and soul surfer. Her screenplay, Dropping In, inspired by her own story of finding true courage through surfing is soon to be a major motion picture. She lives on the Big Island of Hawaii, where she dreams of someday getting barreled. Visit www.sheilagallien.life to find out more about her transformational work.
