So equal and increased prizemoney,which was introduced on the World Championship Tour in 2019 after being in the pipeline for almost a decade prior,can be the difference between Robinson pursuing surfing as a career,especially when head knocks suffered in the water threatened to take it away.
“It’s put a lot of stuff into perspective for me,” Robinson says from Portugal’s Rip Curl Pro after concussions had left her bed bound and unable to walk for six weeks at a time.
“I rock up to each event with a lot of gratitude … it’s not a cheap sport. Surfing and travelling around the world gets really expensive,and not having a major sponsor to back me does make it a little bit trickier.
“But it also makes me work 10 times harder,so I can get to the World Tour and I can earn a bit more money to keep doing what I love.”
Getting paid has been one thing,and equal prizemoney issues still arise in the amateur ranks,including a longboarding event in Noosa last year that flouted Surfing Australia rules.
Levelling the playing field has been another.
For Picklum and Simmers to redefine what’s considered possible when eight-foot Pipeline cranks up,or the girls compete for Olympic gold at Tahiti’s fearsome Teahupo’o break,they have to be given the chance to at least surf them.
Tyler Wright wasn’t wrong when she describedthe often heaving,uber-macho Pipeline line-up as “a f---ing sausage fest” two years ago.
As the WSL’s first female chief of sport,one of Miley-Dyer’s passion projects is the Rising Tides program that precedes every tour stop,clearing the water for young surfers that otherwise probably wouldn’t get a look-in.
Just as Miley-Dyer still treasures a 20-year-old photo of herself “wearing the same sunnies as Layne Beachley” and Picklum prizes a similar memento with the Australian icon,Robinson,a few pros,and a busload of local girls,took over Supertubos,one of Europe’s best waves earlier this week.
“To have these girls come and meet their heroes,it makes that pathway feel tangible,” Miley-Dyer says.
“It gives access to some of these waves,surfing’s not really a regulated sport. There’s nowhere else you could be playing basketball on the same court as[NBA superstar] Lebron James.
“For us to be going to Tahiti and Teahupo’o and shutting down the line-up for some of the young Tahitian women,they get a chance to feel out the line-up and surf out there with the women,it’s a really cool opportunity.
“The first time we did it,all of the groms[young surfers] on the Gold Coast were saying ‘we’ve never seen this many girls out at Duranbah’.”
At the other end of professional surfing’s spectrum,33-year-old Australian Sally Fitzgibbons and French veteran Johanne Defay marvel at the opportunities now on offer,and being taken.
“We’re seeing the evolution of the sport,” Fitzgibbons says.
“As you become one of the veteran athletes,that’s all you can hope for,that the sport becomes better than when you picked it up. You’ve just got to keep passing the baton. I get so much joy from showing up and facing these younger opponents. I’m trying to learn from that and see how far I can evolve my surfing too with them.”
Adds Defay when asked where she’d like to see surfing in another decade:“I just hope female surfers can be recognised as rock stars.”
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