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Rise of the Rookie: Stephanie Gilmore profile by Huck Magazine

Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 18 November, 2008 : - - Focused, mature and fresh out of high school; Stephanie Gilmore burst onto the ASP World Tour last year and ended up walking away with the title. But where do you go once you’ve reached the top so young? Alex Wade finds out.

My son Harry, thirteen, is struggling with the idea of meeting Stephanie Gilmore. Not, you understand, because of a lack of respect for the 2007 Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Women’s World Champion, but because we’re in Seignosse, France, and he wants to go surfing.  “Dad, why do we have to meet her? Can’t we just get some boards and go for a surf? Why didn’t you arrange to interview her when it was dark?”

These and other taxing questions come my way early one August afternoon as Harry and I make our way from Hossegor to the site of the Rip Curl Pro Mademoiselle, the fourth event on the 2008 ASP Women’s World Tour.

Gilmore won the contest the preceding day, and so should be visibly illustrative of her nickname – Stephanie ‘Happy’ Gilmore. But as we walk along the sand to Les Bourdaines on a typically baking hot day, Harry is decidedly unhappy. “Why didn’t we bring our own boards with us? If we had you could talk to Steph while I go surfing. Now, I’ve got to sit around and wait for you to finish.”

Just as these ruminations are underway Gilmore appears. She’s carrying a leashless Rip Curl board coming in at around 5”10’. We shake hands and I introduce Harry. I ask if it’s OK for him to sit in and listen. Gilmore says sure, no worries, but then something occurs to her. Her brows furrow, ever so slightly, and her green eyes flash.

“Unless you want to go surfing?” she says, directly to Harry. “You can borrow my board if you like. Just be careful – it hasn’t got a leash at the moment.” Before I know it, Harry has grabbed the board and is running down the beach. “Are you sure that it’s OK?” I ask, fearing that he might trash it in the notoriously powerful shorebreak of the Landes coastline. “Yeah, no worries,” says Gilmore, with a smile. She really does look happy, and one thing’s for sure – my son is, too.

Stephanie Gilmore was born in Murwillumbah, New South Wales in January 1988. Her father Jeff was a regular in the line-up at the famed right-hand point break of Snapper Rocks, and when his daughter was ten, he took her surfing at nearby Kingscliff. The experience is recalled by photographer Brad Nielson, who, shortly after Gilmore’s world title win, cast his mind back to the first time he had seen the Australian hotshot. It was ten years ago, and Nielson had opted for a surf at Kingscliff.

Before he paddled out, he bumped into Gilmore Senior. As he put it: “A few metres behind him followed a young girl around ten years of age, blonde hair and slight of frame. ‘This is my daughter Stephanie, she wants to learn to surf,’ Jeff added. I kinda felt sorry for her. She looked drained of energy as she tried to keep up with her Dad.”

But if Gilmore’s early surfing experiences were no different to those of every newcomer to the sport, she soon started to demonstrate extraordinary talent. Nielson says that by the time she was twelve, she was a regular at Snapper. She “grew stronger… and every time she surfed she got a little better, a tidy bottom turn here, a cutback there.”

Gilmore herself credits her father’s role in her surfing education: “I’ve got two older sisters and Dad got them into it. It was only a matter of time before I’d follow on.”

By her mid teens, Gilmore was winning just about every contest she entered. The natural footer notched up state, national and world junior titles, but just as important as the influence of her father was that of her environment: “I grew up surfing a reeling right-hander just about every day. What’s not to love about it? It’s one of the best waves in the world, packed with awesome surfers. You have to learn to be patient, but when you’re out there you learn by watching some of the best surfers around.”

Not least, the likes of men’s world title champion Mick Fanning and fellow WCT contender Joel Parkinson. “I love watching those guys surf,” she says, adding that she is also stoked to see any of Tom Curren (“he still surfs as well as ever”), Rob Machado, Lisa Anderson (“powerful and yet feminine”) and Chelsea Hedges in the water.

But whatever their pedigree, no professional surfer has blazed quite so stunning a trail as Gilmore. In 2005 she received a wildcard entry for the Rip Curl Roxy Pro Gold Coast – and won it. She followed suit with another wildcard win in 2006, this time bagging the Havaianas Beachley Classic in Sydney. By the time of the 2007 season Gilmore had no need of wildcards. Then midway through a five-year Rip Curl contract, she embarked upon the Women’s World Tour with the surfing //cognoscenti// predicting that Mick Fanning wouldn’t be the only Australian to win a world title that year.

The season had its ups and downs, but Gilmore came good. She won four events on the tour, including the Billabong Pro Maui, which she had to win to take the title. “Winning the title there was the best feeling in the world,” she says. “Honolua Bay will always have a special place in my heart.” And for being the first surfer – male or female – ever to win a world title in her rookie year, Stephanie Gilmore sealed her place in the hearts of surfing devotees from the Gold Coast to Santa Cruz.

To read the full story check out Huck #012,

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Alex Wade/Huck Magazine

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