As she breaks surfing’s gender and age barriers, 15-year-old Erin Brooks gets ready to take on the world at the Paris Olympics
Erin Brooks looks out from Velzyland Beach on the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii. Born in Texas, she aims to compete for Canada at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.island of Oahu from Honolulu can feel like a bit like journeying back through time. Far from Waikiki’s towering hotels, manicured beaches and Chanel outlets, the freeway suddenly ends, giving way to the sand-dusted Kamehameha Highway. The Kam wends along Oahu’s North Shore, a lush, laid-back place locals call “the country.
At Pipe that December morning, long before the blaze of sunrise, a couple dozen surfers were already bobbing in the water. Many of themThere went Italian great Leo Fioravanti, shaking the water from his brown hair as he stepped ashore with a board shattered by a wave. Nearby, Hawaii’s Carissa Moore – arguably the best female surfer in history – was playing with her two small dogs in the sand. Soul surfer Mikey February was munching on a pastry from Ted’s Bakery.
Erin's family has called Hawaii home for six years, but now she spends much of the year travelling for competitions in places like Tahiti, Indonesia and the Maldives. 'Will Erin look back and wish she had a normal childhood? At 15, she has a full-time job,' says her mother, Michelle. She made the men’s finals, knocking off some of the world’s most eminent surfers, including her mentor, big-wave legend Shane Dorian.
The first time Brooks took her to a skate park she stayed for eight hours. “She was black and blue by the end. She just has no give up. If she sees a boy do something, she thinks:“I see crazy potential in her,” Dorian told The Globe and Mail from his living room in Pupukea, a short walk from Pipeline,
“There is no reason girls can’t do airs,” Dorian says. “There is no physical difference between girls and boys. You’ve just got to be willing to try billions. And not give up.” Erin has learned to play by the prison rules that dictate at Pipe’s tightly packed take-off area. Some don’t appreciate her aggression. “I’m just trying to do my job – calm down,” she told a man who felt she had taken his wave. On a typical day, there might be one woman out there, and 100 men. The difficulty and danger imbue the hallowed break with a kind of nobility.
Her start, at the age of 9, is considered late by surfing standards. Most surfers are on boards by 4. “I had to work my butt off to catch up,” Erin explains. “I’d surf at dawn every day before school, paddling out at dark, and then I’d surf after school, as well.” Erin recovers from agility training in a bath of ice. Her demanding regimen has helped her to catch up with, and exceed, young surfers who typically start at an earlier age than she did.
‘I’m really competitive,’ says Erin, shown at middle right with other surfers at Banzai Pipeline. ‘I just want to be better than everyone else.’ With his sharp blue eyes, ragged flip flops, unkempt beard and brown hair spilling over his shoulders, Brooks looks like a Russian mystic, a Rasputin lost in the tropics.
“Sometimes I feel a little overwhelmed with the whole thing,” says Brooks, tidying the one-bedroom apartment the family shares on Oahu. The Great White North is hardly a surfing powerhouse, but Erin could encourage a generation of kids growing up in the wave pool era to pick up surfboards instead of hockey sticks. Mechanized wave pools that create ocean-like barrels 365 days a year are fast democratizing the sport, incubating talent in cold-weather climes, where skiing and snowboarding dominate.
The reaction from fellow parents at last summer’s world championship – the first time Erin wore red and white – was a little less enthusiastic. Four came up separately to Jeff and Michelle with the same question: “How much did Canada pay you?” “That’s enticing – versus trying to go to battle against women when you weigh 95 pounds,” Brooks says. But Erin always has the same question whenever the plan is proposed: “What about the contests?” She is driven, and intensely competitive. Recent wins have stoked that raging, inner fire.
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