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Over the last year, it’s been one of the biggest stories in British surfing.
How Croyde’s own Laura Crane headed to Nazare, and surfed the biggest waves ever snagged by a British woman.
No wonder if’s been covered by everybody from Carve to BBC Radio Five Live.
But if you’ve been listening a little bit more closely, you’ll realise that there’s actually much more to Laura’s story than this admittedly incredible feat.
And it’s this aspect of the story, the bit that most surf media seems to have missed, that I was interested in discussing when we caught up for this conversation at the end of August 2024.
Because the truth is that Laura’s professional surfing career has been as much about rejecting the preordained role the surf industry demands of its women professionals as it has been about the actual surfing.
It’s been about understanding the personal impact of this institutionalised toxicity - in Laura’s case bulimia.
And it’s been an ongoing battle to balance her love of surfing with the demands a predominately male surf media and industry make on female bodies and identities.
As anybody who has been paying attention will realise, this is a depressingly familiar story when it comes to women’s professional sport, no matter how high the profile.
Think of Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles, or Serena Williams, for example; women with about as much agency as it’s possible to have in the world of professional sport, and yet who have still had to constantly fight to establish their own physical and mental boundaries.
And it’s here that we find the real power in Laura’s story. Her account of the reality of the professional surfing dream, and its impact on her, is one we just don’t hear very often. That’s why it is so important.
Ultimately, it’s a story of reclamation, in which Laura has remade her own story, and shaped her surfing future, on her own terms.
Yes, it has taken her to Nazare. But what’s really going to be exciting is seeing where it takes her next.
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