Botha says envy there as riders strut stuff

MULTIPLE world champion Wendy Botha says every time she watches world championship contender Stephanie Gilmore surf a rippable wave “a green-eyed monster” appears.

When Gilmore nails a barrel, rides a perfect tube or gets to surf in a wave pool, the fourtime world champion and legend admits she is jealous.

Gilmore and her cohorts are lifting women’s surfing to new levels now they share time in the best conditions with their male counterparts, whose prizemoney they will match on the world tour for the first time in 2019.

An early campaigner for more equitable prizemoney and conditions for women, Botha, now 53, says she would give “half a leg” to be surfing at Kelly Slater’s surf ranch on manmade waves.

“There’s plenty of greeneyed monster there,” said Botha, an inductee in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame 2018 for her domination of surfing in the late ’80s and ’90s before retiring at just 27.

“But at the same time I am so happy they are being sent out in great conditions now. So happy they are getting equal time in the best waves. They deserve it all. I never thought I would see it in my lifetime

“For me it’s not about the money. I just wish I was surfing those great conditions too.’’

Botha said no matter how they pushed for fairness, women in her era were always treated as second class when it came to surfing the best waves in competition.

“We were always sent out in the crappiest of crap. I can count on one, maybe two hands, the competition surfs I had in good waves,” she said.