MAKING WAVES: CANADA’S PAIGE ALMS IN THE DARING WORLD OF BIG-WAVE SURFING
As career pinnacles go, Paige Alms has one that is hard to beat: it came atop Pe’ahi, a 25-to-50-foot surf break in Maui that surfers have nicknamed “Jaws.” Scaling and descending such watery heights with style has made Canadian-born Alms a champion big-wave surfer and som a legend in wave-rider circles. But it wasn’t until six months ago that she was able to quit her side job as a waitress and surf full-time.
Alms, a native of Victoria, B.C., fell in love with big-wave surfing – where surfers ride waves of more than 20 feet – after her family moved to Maui when she was 9. By the time she was 18, she had turned professional. Since then, she has won four consecutive years at the XXL Awards, as well as Best Overall Performance for the 2014-2015 season. Yet those accomplishments have not exactly brought her huge financial rewards. When she became Big Wave Champion at Pe’ahi in 2016 and again in 2017, she was paid $15,000. Her male counterpart won $25,000.
That’s not surprising, perhaps, in surfing, where marketing and media tend to be “very male-driven – run by men, heavily featuring men,” Alms says. But she decided to try to do something about it. Along with a group of other women surfers – the “Big Wave Girls,” she calls them – Alms is one of the founding members of the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing, which has been working since 2015 to increase the number of events and awards for women, in addition to establishing pay equity. Thanks in large part to the efforts of the Big Wave Girls, the World Surf League announced this June that it will award equal prize money for every WSL event, including the 2018/2019 Mavericks Challenge in California and all events going forward.
Like any professional athlete worth her salt, Alms, 30, is already on to new challenges, including qualifying to compete in the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, where surfing will be included for the first time. As well, she has just signed an ambassador deal with apparel brand Patagonia, which is expanding into the surf market. “I was travelling way too much and working a couple nights a week at a restaurant near where I live,” says Alms. “At a certain point, I realized it was time to move on, and Patagonia is allowing me to do that.”
One of her goals is to see more equal representation of women in the surf media. “The industry has been very male-dominated as far as the media goes,” Alms says. “I do think a lot of this is changing, with the best female surfers being so much more outspoken now. It’s a pretty cool time to be a part of this sport.”
THE INDUSTRY HAS BEEN VERY MALEDOMINATED AS FAR AS THE MEDIA GOES