The Stephanie Gilmore Interview
Interview by Alistair Klinkenberg as it appears in Issue 52. Photos by Chris Searl.
The Gilmore girls are far from the easiest people to get ahold of.
Surf writer Sean Doherty once described Steph’s sister/ manager/travel partner/goalkeeper Whitney as “aloof”; a description to which she took offence. Aloof means not friendly or forthcoming, cool and distant, and while cool and distant occasionally applies – as in the gals are off somewhere doing something cool, and you can’t get in contact with them. But unfriendly? Not forthcoming? Not our Gilmores. The Gilmores do what the Gilmores want to do – an admirable sentiment. 10:30s often become 11s and 12s. But when the girls are there, their attention is undividedly yours.
Steph’s in a stage of her career where she’s taking advantage of the opportunities afforded to a woman of 28 who’s already reached the summit of her sport six times. The only thing is, rather than it being a, “I’m done with that, so what now?” type scenario, she’s still competing full time on the world tour while doing all the extra-curricular things that take her fancy in her limited time off. So, she’s busy. However, thankfully for us, Steph’s been fully giving of her time.
Steph and her sister have recently and semi-permanently relocated to Malibu CA, and they’ve taken on ’Bu life with aplomb. The Gilmores tend to improvise when it comes to the day’s plans. Most start with Steph attending Laird Hamilton’s ‘XPT’ (Extreme Performance Training) session close to their Malibu pad, a workout based on breathing, innovative movement, and recovery in a pool. During the week-long period that I spent with the Gilmores, a daily highlight was having coffee while watching clips on Steph’s phone of her crawling along the bottom of a pool covered in weights, and discussing the daily reports of the training group’s randomly famous clientele – Rick Rubin, the guy who wrote Braveheart (Randall Wallace), the guy who wrote The Game (Neil Strauss) – a humorous ritual that normally ended up with someone concluding that, “This place (LA) is wild.”
After morning training, it’s time to let the handbrake off and soak up whatever the City of Angels has to offer. When you hang out with Steph for a few days it’s easy to see the appeal that LA holds. The surf world can be claustrophobic – travelling the world to the same places, with the same people, competing in the same contests can get a little stale. LA’s lots of things but stale’s not one of them, and you can tell that the Gilmores are relishing in hanging out with people who’re outside their regular catchment area. Steph’s surfing career came on in a flash, and her six world titles before the age of 26 are a testament to the swiftness of her dominance. Steph won her first title in her rookie year on tour – unheard of in pretty much all sports – at just 19 years of age. Talking over dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Santa
Monica, Steph explains her rise to the stop of women’s surfing as being a combination of her advanced ability and sheer belief in herself.
“I have a very fond memory of watching the women surf Snapper back when it was a WQS (World Qualifying Series) event,” Steph tells me in-between mouthfuls of guacamole. “I would’ve been around 16, I’d just finished school for the day and had run down to watch the end of the contest. I remember thinking, ‘I’m so much better than these girls.’ And I can’t believe I’m even admitting that, but as this young girl, I thought, ‘I can do this, just give me a chance.’”
This, at the time unexplainable, feeling that Steph had wasn’t arrogance. Arrogance implies having an exaggerated view of one’s ability, what Steph had was confidence in her ability, and it’s not a rare trait among people who achieve excellence. I ask Steph what it was that drove her to hit the skill level that she’s reached. Surfing’s one of the most difficult things you can dedicate yourself to, and reaching an elite level requires nothing if not hours of practice. Talent can only take you so far, working out the nuances of the ocean and putting it all together takes intense, obsessive drive (see also: being fiercely competitive), or the protagonist being pre-disposed to allow themselves to dedicate unlimited bouts of intense focus to an activity for a reason unbeknownst to them. I hint to Steph that I’d put her in the former category, and she lets out a chuckle. “I always just wanted to win. That’s all I wanted to do. I just loved winning, I wanted to win everything,” she laughs.
If you see Steph working her way up and down the fretboard on her chosen axe, the six world titles instantly make sense. The look as she intensely noodles is far from the usual happy-go-lucky demeanour; the blinkers are on and failure’s not an option. When Steph’s contemporaries at school were worrying about parties, boyfriends, and the impending doom of leaving school and having to pick something to do with their lives, she describes being in a vastly different position. After years of sneaking off from school and catching the ‘Surfrider’ bus 40ish minutes from her family home on the North Coast of NSW to surf in the competitive proving ground of Snapper Rocks, Steph had gotten her surfing to a level that made professional surfing a viable option, and it was something that she took as a certain. I ask Steph about her mindset as her school years came to a close...
“Oh, I was so sure,” she replies. “All of my friends were trying to decide what they were going to study, whether they were going to university or not, all of those things. I never experienced the nerves of ‘What am I going to be?’ because the whole time I knew exactly what I was going to do. And it was strange because I’d seen my sisters go through that stage years earlier. Suddenly having to decide, ‘God, what am I going to do? I have to decide right now...’”
Fast forward ten years from finishing high school and it seems like Steph’s on the cusp of finally having to answer those questions. Only this time she heads into the predicament with the well-deserved luxury of six world titles and unlimited options. It’s not that Steph’s looking to pack in competitive surfing any time soon, it’s more that she’s exploring other avenues and interesting ways to spend her time outside of the obligations of competition. “I feel like in and around events, I’ll surf heaps and be really consumed by it,” says Steph. “And then I can go a week without surfing and it won’t really bother me as much as it used to. That’s because I’m excited to do other stuff these days, like do this (guest edit Monster Children), and travel. I have so much fun travelling to other places and not being constantly worried about missing something at the beach.” This extra-curricular curiosity is what has made Steph so damn marketable in the first place, and as she heads into the next few years of her career, it’s something that she’s intently aware of.
The thing that’s allowed Steph to transcend the traditional route of the female professional surfer, and landed her in the enviable position in which she currently sits, is her freesurfing. Steph is perhaps the only surfer in the world, male or female, who transcends the stigma of competitive surfing being a betrayal of the original surfing ethos. Steph sits at the peak of performance, and also embodies the traditional surfing values of freedom of expression and flow. Her performance in Andrew Kidman’s 2013 film Spirit of Akasha, as a case study, is remarkable. Michel Peterson’s Kirra section in Alby Falzon’s 1971 film Morning of the Earth is arguably the most iconic surfing performance caught on film. And, who was chosen by Kidman to pay homage to this great surfing pioneer on replica equipment? Steph Gilmore. Cutting straight to the point, I ask Steph whether her job is to sell bikinis or win world titles. Her reply is as honest as it is balanced. “I think they go hand-in-hand,” she says. “But personally it’s winning titles, and corporately it’s selling bikinis. I think that’s how it is for any athlete though. If you look at all the most decorated athletes on the planet, the success and the trophies get to a point where it’s like, ‘Alright, what else does this human have for us? Can they sell this product? How valuable is their brand?’”
It’s refreshing to hear such a self-aware response from a professional surfer. Far from thinking that she’s changing the world one cutback at a time, Steph knows exactly where her value lies, and this is tied into the now and the search for alternate avenues where HMS Stephanie can sail. Steph’s sister Whitney plays an integral part in her career. The two started working together when Steph’s star was burning bright enough to land her on the radar of people outside of the surf world, and it was Whitney that brought Steph’s act a little influence from outside of surfing.
“From day one, that was the reason why Whitney and I worked together,” explains Steph. “I was completely covered in sand and sunscreen my whole life, and then I have to stand on stage and accept an award, and I’m like, ‘Wow, what on earth do I wear?’ And Whitney would say, ‘Hey, I think you’d look awesome in this.’ She’s got such a great eye for that stuff. And as a result, the amount of compliments and coverage that I’ve received has contributed to building my brand, and she’s been invaluable. You’re not always born with a pre-programmed sense of style, sometimes you just need a little help.”
However, as the girls found out, managing the image of a highly successful and marketable athlete is far from a straightforward gig. The bigger your profile, the more people want a piece of you. Shutting everything down is bad for business, but on the flip side, saying yes temporarily puts your image in the hands of others. And this, is occasionally problematic.
The glamourising of female surfing is something that’s happened in the last five years, and Steph’s played a pivotal role in catapulting the sport into the mainstream. However, she’s occasionally become entangled in the age old grey area of, ‘sex sells, but how much is too much?’ The Roxy promotional video that Steph starred in as a prelude to the 2013 Roxy Pro France caused a rumble, and at the time was seen as possibly damaging to the brand that Steph and Whitney had worked so hard to create. The clip runs for two minutes and sees Steph waking up in her hotel room, having a shower, getting dressed, heading to the beach and pulling on her contest rash prior to a heat. It’s all carefully filmed to avoid showing her face—guess who’s the vibe. It’s playful and cheeky sure, but overtly sexual it is not. But from the public’s reaction you wouldn’t think so. The clip was somewhat of a turning point in the evolution of women’s surfing and it really shed light on the hypocrisy that the women are subject to. Steph posing naked for the ESPN Body Issue? Empowering. Steph being somewhat provocative for her own sponsor within the surf world? Uproar.
'“The question comes up in women’s surfing so much,” explains Steph. “‘Why do women feel like they have to sexualise surfing to get anywhere?’ And if you shoot for ELLE or Vogue, then great – let’s do sexy and show some more skin. On a different platform, it’s instantly viewed in a different way.”
What’s resulted from the trial and error phase of Steph’s career, however, is an acute knowledge of what does and doesn’t work for her brand identity. Her act’s refined, and for all things Steph, Whitney is the gatekeeper.
“A huge mistake was that when I was younger and managing Steph, I was looking at the fashion magazines,” Whit explains. “The surfing world and high fashion are not related in any way. Not even close. Surfing’s not about fashion and trend, it’s about what you stand for and who you are.”
“Together with Whitney, we carefully curate my style, but only so it sits hand in hand with my surfing style. My performance, surfing wise, I think is what people enjoy the most – ‘she looks like she’s having fun, and totally enjoying what she’s doing’ – and I’ve always been like that, even in my most awkward teenage days when I looked like Mick Fanning, a young tomboy,” she laughs.
The next stage of Steph’s career will be a new frontier for women’s surfing; never before has a female surfer held such power in terms of the avenues open to them. At the time of writing, for all the talk of interests outside of professional surfing, Steph’s just made the semifinals of the Swatch Women’s Pro at Lower Trestles, and looks to be in season best form having just beaten career-greatest rival Carissa Moore in the quarterfinals. You might see a diversity of badges sewn to the Gilmore tunic in coming years, but when Steph gets back from saving the rhinos in Africa, or walking the red carpet next to Kim and Kanye at the Met Gala in Manhattan, or playing lead breaks with Spiderbait on stage, she’ll still be listing “Surfer” as her primary occupation on immigration forms for the foreseeable future. I’d be willing to put ten bob on her being able to jot down “7x World Champ” in brackets beside her name after next year as well.
This interview appears in Issue 52, as guest edited by Stephanie Gilmore.
