Unexpected.
But you can imagine my sheer delight, this Mother’s Day morning, after I rubbed the sleep out of eyes, gathered iPhone, began my ritual of scrolling through the surf news and stumbled upon a feel-good story about Keala Kennelly, described in the piece as “The Best Female Surfer on Earth,” and her current journey. Oh I am not suggesting that Kennelly is a mother, or that mothers are female, only that I was pleased to see the big wave world tour champion back in the water after a recent hip surgery.
The incident requiring medical intervention occurred on a giant day at Jaws wherein a gust of wind bothered her surfboard causing it to “hit me in my shin, then it flipped up and hit me in my ribs, then flipped up again and hit me in my chin, then I cartwheeled down a 50-foot wave.”
Adding injury to insult, the tug of her leash on leg pulled her leg out of socket and tore the labrum in her hip.
Ouch.
Kennelly, though, tough continued to surf until it became too much to bear and eventually went under the knife then spent eight months rehabilitating out of the water.
But now she is back, so back that she headed to Australia to toss her cap into the Challenger Series ring. “I’ve done all this work for equality, and never really gotten to benefit from [it],” she told the website Well+Good. “So it’ll be cool to kind of like, take the temperature of where the tour is at and see those positive changes. I’m going to do an audit.”
Well, I raced over to the World Surf League’s eponymous website just as quick as I could only to discover Kennelly was delivered a shock loss in heat 1 of the round of 64, falling to fellow Hawaiians Gabriela Bryan and Zoe McDougall and Brazilian Summer Macedo. Sally Fitzgibbons, who surfed in the next heat, advanced by holding second place.
Silver linings, I suppose.
Is there sudden elimination on the Challenger Series?
Here’s hoping not.
