YOUNG GUN SUFFERS COMPLETE WIPEOUT WITH SPONSORSHIP
AUSTRALIA’S best surfers are wondering what else women must do to prove themselves worthy of corporate backing.
Joel Parkinson, a former world champion and winner of the Pipeline Masters, was at a loss to explain how Hawaii’s Moana Jones Wong took the crown at the inaugural women’s Championship Tour event at Pipeline – with no major sponsor.
Instead, Wong is babysitting on O’ahu and teaching surfing at local beaches to fund her fledgling career.
“Pipeline is one of the most difficult events to win, if not the most difficult,” Parkinson said. “The girls’ talent these days is so advanced, they can push the boundaries just as far as the men, they’re all ripping it up.”
Parkinson said he saw how hard it was for women to get sponsorship.
“I never had to do a bikini shoot, I was there to compete,” he said.
“The women put in just as much effort as the men, sometimes more.
“(But) I think it’s really hard to get sponsors in the surf industry these days. The industry is just not as profitable as it was 10 or 15 years ago.”
Jones Wong, 22, had entered Pipeline as a rookie and was unseeded in the World Surf League (WSL).
She only narrowly scored a chance to compete as a wildcard entrant after stunning judges at Pipeline in December, scoring the most points among the women at a promotional competition known as the Backdoor Shootout.
“Right now, I’m actually not under contract with anyone,” she said a week after hoisting the Pipeline trophy alongside the men’s winner Kelly Slater. “I have no money coming in. I’m a completely clean slate.”
Jones Wong previously had a commercial arrangement with surf, skate and snow brand Volcom for benefits such as free gear and what is understood to be minor cash incentives.
That agreement ended in December and she admitted it was “not enough to live on” in Hawaii, supplementing her income with babysitting and holding surf lessons.
The last time a rookie won a women’s Championship Tour event was in 2010, when Australian Tyler Wright won at Sunset Beach in Hawaii.
Wright went on to become a twotime world champion.
Jones Wong showed she has what it takes to follow the same path, scoring a 6 and 7.67 at Pipeline for two impressive overhead-barrel waves in the final to demolish five-time world champion and fellow Hawaiian Carissa Moore.
Former top-10 surfer Rebecca Woods, who won the Australian Junior Surfing Title in 2002 and spent nine years on the Championship Tour from 2004-2013, said some of the best female athletes often struggled to attract sponsors if they didn’t fit into a “cardboard cut-out of what men wanted female surfers to look like”.
“During my time on tour, the highest-paid women were the ones who wore G-string bikinis,” the surfer said. “The marketing managers were usually old-school, for-the-boys surfers. I think that is changing now, but there is still a long way to go for mainstream surf brands to recognise diversity.”
Parkinson, who was on the men’s Championship Tour at the same time as Woods, added: “Personally, I think women’s surfing is just as good as the men.”