Stephanie Gilmore

Interviewed by Derek Hynd on www.surfermag.com, Australian World Title contender Joel Parkinson talked about all he had seen around the world and around home in recent year.

HYND: What about the increase of female surfers? You notice it? PARKO Orr it's a joke. You can't drop in on them. It's like, I'll drop in on any guy but you don't drop in on a girl just like you'll never hit a girl. There's a girl who rips out at Snapper.

PARKO Stephanie Gilmore.
Good surfer. Almost as good as Lisa at that age.
PARKO I'd say better. I've seen her get so deep. She's going to be really good.
But only so long as she immerses herself surfing around guys. That's a key, right?
PARKO Yep. All the grommets, everyone likes her. She's 14 or 15.

The world liked Steph Gilmore even more in March of 2005 when she came from the trials to win the Roxy Pro Gold Coast at her home break of Snapper Rocks. Just five weeks after turning 17, that Gilmore Girl surfed through Layne Beachley and Sofia Mulanovich to become the youngest-ever winner of a women’s WCT event.

Born in Murwillumbah, New South Wales in 1988, Steph’s first board was a 5'9 Local Knowledge bought from a second hand furniture shop. She learned to surf at 9 or 10 at Kingscliff, then with improvement moved up to the legendary points at Snapper Rocks and Greenmount.

She entered her first contest in 1999, the 99 Rusty Gromfest at Lennox head, finishing second in the Under 12s to Karina Petroni. Her first victory was at an all-girl’s contest at Lennox Head, winning the Under 14 division at the age of 12. When she isn’t surfing Steph is strumming on her old guitar and mentions Ben Harper, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton as her idols. She believes her strengths as a surfer are Style, good boards and a solid roundhouse cutback, but she says she needs to work on her backhand surfing, which makes sense for a girl from the Land of Rights. As an amateur competitive surfer, Steph’s results could not have been better: She won the International Surfing Association (ISA) World Junior Title in Tahiti in December 2004, just after winning the Australian Junior Title. All that lead into a wildcard slot at the Roxy Pro Gold Coast in March of 2005, and she announced herself loud and clear to the world.

A few months after that victory. Gilmore signed a five-year contract with Rip Curl and she announced her intentions to WET Magazine: “Qualify for the WCT, get on there and kick some ass.”

A bold statement, considering some of those behinds belong to the likes of Sofia Mulanovich, Chelsea Georgeson and Layne Beachley, who together are only slightly more competitive than the entire NFL. But Steph beat them as a youngster and she is likely to beat them again. She is at the top of the heap of a New School of grommettes who have been studying videos of the top women for years, and are ready to take women’s surfing to a whole new level. Steph rips, but she is not alone.