The historic inclusion of the women’s division at the World Surf League’s season-opening World Championship Tour event at Pipeline this month has thrown a sharp new focus on women’s surfing, and created a new icon for it as a biproduct.
When local wildcard Moana Jones Young elegantly threaded her way through enough barrels to take the Pipe Pro crown and shoot to number one on the women’s rankings, it was a banner day for the sport, but there were a few ripples along the way. Moana’s channeling of Pipe master Gerry Lopez at her home break in the final had to wait until the day after Kelly Slater’s extraordinary victory in big difficult conditions. What got the surfing commentariat frothing was the fact that even though there was plenty of time on the schedule, the final three heats of the women’s competition was quietly held over.
As Swellnet’s Steve Shearer reported: “Head of Competition Jessi Miley-Dyer was as cheery as a chipmunk in clover this morning when she announced Finals Day, “I’m here to let you know that today will be Finals Day,” she said with a huge grin. “We’ll be starting with Men’s Quarter-Finals and then moving into Women’s Semis”. ‘Finally’, thought a million surf fans, ‘we get to see the women at proper Pipe’. Huge crowd. Chunky gnarly Pipe. Minimum of $25,000 US Dollars for paddling out. $80,000 for the winner.
“But as Men’s QF 4 ticked down a pall of silence fell over the webcast. It was like someone had died suddenly, but we didn’t know who, or how. Well, we knew who – it was the women’s semi-finals. Nothing from Jessi. Nothing from the booth. Not a word of explanation to the audience. For a broadcast team that can’t manage to catch all the live action and keep pace with what is happening on screen it was a remarkable level of co-ordination.”
Okay, the bumbling incompetence of the WSL is a common theme on surf websites. We get that. But Shearer, a good writer whose event coverages I enjoy, had a bee in his bonnet about the women competitors too, and their apparent reluctance to man up.
He continued: “Don’t get me wrong. I do not disrespect fear. Fear is the most disrespected commodity in action sports and popular culture. Contrary to the therapy speak that “nothing” lies on the other side of fear, in this case it’s very much a something … At a certain level though, someone has to be courageous enough to be honest about the fear. It could have been Tyler, maybe Carissa.
“At the least JMD [Miley-Dyer] should have protected her athletes and carried the can for them. Instead of making a statement such as, ‘We’ve decided conditions are too unsafe and in the interests of our athletes have decided not to hold competition,’ JMD threw her girls under the bus, making it clear that “after discussions with the women” they’d decided not to run due to the wind. It was a disgraceful display of corporate cowardice and JMD should on the next plane home looking for a new job.”
Of course everyone at the WSL and the media had access to the Surfline forecast which showed only slightly smaller and cleaner conditions for the next day, but that didn’t stop the torrent of outrage continuing. Not only were the women letting themselves down, they were letting us down. I mean who doesn’t want to see Carissa Moore or Tyler Wright quaking in fear as a monster set washes through Second Reef! The hacks of the 24-hour news cycle were baying for blood!
This is what Shearer had to say when the women ran the following morning in beautiful conditions: “Well, the women got their day at proper Pipe and the sporting world finally got an answer to the question: who wants a piece of barrelling 8-10 foot Pipe amongst the women’s elite? Not many. Tyler Wright did not. Lakey Peterson did not. Carissa Moore did not.”
I don’t know how Steve knew that, but true or false, I think he needs to ease up on the hairy-chested raves and consider the fact that most of the field had done very little time at one of the world’s most dangerous reefs. With the exception of Jones Wong, they were tentative and often out of position looking for the shoulder, even normally fearless Tyler Wright. Anyone who has ever surfed a wave of consequence knows that feeling, no matter how great your skills level.
By the time you read this the girls will probably be competing at big Sunset. I hope they shred it, and I hope all the macho media men glued to their screens at 3am give them a break.
Vale Peter Cole
One of the greats of early big wave riding, Peter Cole has died at his North Shore, Oahu home, aged 91.
Peter, a tall, gentle, softly-spoken man who made his reputation riding giant waves at Waimea Bay and Sunset Beach in the late 1950s and ‘60s, was born in Los Angeles and started surfing at Santa Monica aged 14. While studying fine arts at Stanford University, he started driving over the coastal range to surf the big waves of Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz, and after graduation he accepted a job teaching maths at Punahou College in Honolulu. While he wasn’t crazy about maths, the job put him an hour away from the huge waves of the North Shore, and he was soon a regular in the scant line-up on maxed out days.
I met Peter several times in the ‘70s, but it wasn’t until the ‘90s, while writing a book about one of his students at Punahou, the famed big wave surfer Jeff Hakman, that we became friendly and I grew to respect the inner man as well as the surf hero.
