Historic opportunity beckons for World Surf League and world’s best female professional surfers as Margaret River WCT event set to launch in Waimea Bay-like “twelve-to-eighteen-foot surf!”

Give 'em the stage and they'll dazzle.

Tomoz afternoon Main Break Margs, site of the fourth event on the abbreviated WCT calendar, is gonna light up size-wise, eight-feet, maybe a few ten-footers, twelve-to-eighteen if you prefer your size via Surfline. 

The spike is short, but it’s gonna be good, although nothing is real, as this local says, until y’see it on game day. 

For the WSL, the swell is a godsend after the nothingness of Newcastle and Narrabeen and gifts the company a canvas to showcase its commitment to its fav cause, equal pay, equal play for gals. 

Three years ago, the WSL, and I quote the presser, became “the first and only US based global sports league, and among the first internationally, to achieve prize money equality.” 

A good thing.

Tomorrow, some time around three pm, and after mowing through a dozen heats of the men in a building south-west swell, the WSL is expected, at least by me, to loose the best women in the world into serious Margaret River.

Courtney, Tyler, Bronte, Stephanie, Carissa, you know they got the skills to ride these bulldozers. 

Give ’em the stage and they’ll dazzle.

In 1991, Pauline Menczer,  body pretzeled with arthritis, had a swing. 

Four months ago, the big-wavers Justine Dupont, Izzi Gomez, Keala Kennelly, Paige Alms, Andrea Moller and Annie Reickert made history by throwing ’emselves into thirty-foot waves at Jaws. 

Will tomoz be a repeat or will the WSL squib it and keep the gals heats until the swell evaporates on Monday?

After an Australian longboarder called out event organisers for paying the women half as much as the men, debate was split, I think it’s safe to say, down three lines. 

Argument 1: I mean, prize money should be equal for men and women, obviously. Duh. I don’t know why this is a thing we still have to argue about in 2021 but here we are. (Jen See.)

Argument 2: the men have a way bigger viewer draw, more ‘eyes watching’, isn’t that really what the sponsors want, what the advertisers are paying for? It seems with the men, the sponsors, the advertisers, get more return, (more eyes watching, thus generating more income), for their investment. (Sam Waters.)

Argument 3: Scrap the menswomens division and have just one division so $ from both goes in one pot for the best riders be they men or women (sorry woke crew, I invoked gender something totally made up I know). Besides, it’s longboarding which is womanly so they should be able to compete. (Aloha 12)

The documentary Girls Can’t Surf was built around the premise that if only men released the jackboot from women’s necks and allowed ’em to play in real waves, you’d see an unprecedented shift in what was possible.

Big day tomoz.