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Making waves: Brazil’s surf sensation Maya Gabeira inspires girls

posted by Pretty Tough | Girls Who Are Fun Fierce & Feminine
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 3:25pm CDT

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A Brazilian is emerging as one of the world’s top big wave surfers – and she’s a woman. Maya Gabeira’s skills and bravery have made her a female pioneer of daredevil tactics in a male-dominated sport. Pretty Tough, indeed.

Gabeira first took to a surfboard as an escape from her own teenage rebellion, but now she is breaking as many taboos and preconceptions as she is surfing breakers. She gave up a privileged life in Brazil to chase a dream: to surf the world’s biggest waves. From Hawaii to South Africa, Gabeira is doing exactly that, riding one wall of water after another.

Five years after leaving Rio de Janeiro, the 22-year-old is a star on and off the water. After winning a third consecutive surfing “Oscar” for best female this spring, she has just done a photo-shoot for Italy’s Vanity Fair and recently appeared on a popular Brazilian variety TV show that generates audiences of up to 80 million viewers.

Hailed as a pioneer for female athletes, Gabeira has become a role model for young women who are following her into the sport.

“It’s changing already,” she told the Observer. “The girls on tour are surfing so good and they are young and beautiful. Being a surfer and feminine at the same time is becoming more normal now.”

Dubbed the belíssima surfista by local media, Gabeira is a striking departure from the footballers who are Brazil’s traditional sporting idols. The daughter of a fashion designer mother and political dissident father, her struggle as she was growing up was not against poverty and racism but the trauma of her parents’ divorce and an unwillingness to conform. When she was 14, a boyfriend introduced her to surfing and she was hooked (though far from a natural).

After finishing school, Gabeira moved to Hawaii to pursue her passion. In between working as a waitress and learning English, she borrowed boards and hit the waves at Waimea Bay.

Underneath her feminine veneer is a young woman driven to pursue a rush that few of us will ever know, punishing her body and testing her resolve as she breaks into a macho and fiercely-territorial boy’s club. She gradually took on bigger and bigger swells, eventually taking on the monster waves that only a few daredevils risk.

“I thought it would be so cool to have a girl who could do it, just like the boys,” she says. “I thought it was an impressive sport, and so radical and intense, and it took so much dedication. And I thought if I ever saw a girl doing it, I’d be impressed… Right now, I can’t even visualise that that girl is me.”

Big-wave surfing has been around since the late 1950s, when a handful of surfers first paddled into 6m waves on Oahu’s mythical North Shore in Hawaii. Legends such as Greg Noll paved the way for the discipline’s biggest names, from Ken Bradshaw to Laird Hamilton. Massive breaks and barrels, like Maverick’s in California, Teahupoo in Tahiti or Dungeons in South Africa, are sacred to the surfing community. For a great look at big wave surfing watch Riding Giants (Special Edition), an outstanding documentary about surf culture.

From the 1990s a handful of women such as Layne Beachley, Rochelle Ballard, Keala Kennelly and Sarah Gerhardt (the first women to surf Mavericks) started taking on big waves. Gabeira followed their lead, and then went further. “No one had ever seen a woman take off on waves as big or dangerous as Maya,” said Bruce Jenkins, author of the surfing bible North Shore Chronicles.

Her wipeouts have become famous. One spectacular tumble at Teahupo’o, a deadly reef break in Tahiti, was the most impressive ever witnessed in female surfing, Jenkins said. “This brought her considerable notoriety in a man’s world. There are some great, well-paid, well-travelled surfers who would never take off on that and other waves.”

This spring she won her third straight Billabong XXL Girls’ Best Overall Performance Award. “She has continually pushed the boundaries of female big wave surfing,” the judges said.

Why aren’t there more female big wave surfers? A disparity in prize money may not help. Greg Long, who won top honors as “rider of the year”, was handed $50,000. As “best girl”, Gabeira received $5,000.

Gabeira has more of a chance to push big-wave surfing into the mainstream than perhaps anyone else. It’s a prospect both exhilarating and exhausting to the 22-year-old, who still struggles to fathom how she went from travelling the world’s surf meccas on borrowed money and clothes to assuming the mantle of professional women’s big-wave pioneer.

Keep making waves, girl!

For more info on Gabeira, check out this interview on sponsor Red Bull’s site.

(info from Red Bulletin magazine, the Observer)