"Whatever professional surfing looks like now or in the future, surfers will always know the names of the best men and women at Pipeline."
“Pipeline for the fucking girls,” said Caity Simmers, eighteen years old, after she won the biggest victory of her career at the Lexus Pipe Pro on Saturday
It was a quote for the ages on a day that made legends. It was one of the best-ever days of women’s surfing, pure and simple. The women set a new mark at Pipeline one of the world’s most fearsome waves. We’ve never seen anything like it in women’s surfing.
Until now.
On the way to victory, Caity displayed her preternatural gift for tube-riding and threaded some deep pits at Backdoor. In the final, she narrowly beat hard-charging Australian Molly Picklum, who posted some of the highest single wave totals of the day. Caity Simmers is now world number one. It’s Caity Simmers’ world and we just live in it.
If you watch one heat from finals day, though, make it the semifinal between 2022 Vans Pipe Pro winner Molly and Hawaiian Bettylou Sakura Johnson. It has all the ingredients: two feisty competitors who are almost evenly matched in skill and firing surf. If you can’t find anything to like here, professional surfing may not be for you.
Going left, Molly opened with a 5.33. Bettylou answered back with a 7.00 at Backdoor. And it was on. The heat was straight fire all the way through to the end. In a notable departure from the past, both women went left and right with equal commitment.
It was a sign of what women’s surfing will look like from now on. It’s no longer enough to get pitted at Backdoor as a regular foot. If you want to win, you’d better go left, too.
And that’s exactly what Molly did on the best wave of the day and arguably the best Pipe wave yet surfed by a woman in competition. On a steep left, Molly dropped from the heavens, suspended in time. Her rail dug into the steep blue face and held. With near-perfect form, she slid behind the lip and disappeared.
As the wave compressed and spit, Molly came flying out. She half-raised her arms in what’s quickly becoming a signature non-claim, as if she didn’t quite believe she’d made it.
Believe it, Molly.
I’m not sure anyone watching the heat needed the replay or the judges’ call to know that was a ten. What else could she have done? It was a stellar ride. And to think at 21, Molly’s still at the beginning of her career.
As the clock ticked down, Bettylou needed an 8.6. It felt like a tall order, but somehow during this heat, everything felt possible. The two women paddled each other back and forth on the peak with neither one willing to back down. Inside the final two minutes, Molly used her priority on a steep, but short Backdoor pit. It didn’t extend her lead. Alone in the lineup, Bettylou had just over 30 seconds remaining.
At 39 seconds, Bettylou found a left and paddled with everything she had. Less strong on her backhand than Molly, the Hawaiian didn’t fully disappear into the barrel. All of the same, it was a hell of a ride under pressure. At 18, Bettylou has barely surfed one full year on the Championship Tour in her career — she missed the cut in 2022 — but it’s already clear she has the head for competition.
Did you think she got the score? The judges, rightly I feel, said no.
What’s wild to imagine is that any one of the scoring waves from Molly and Bettylou’s heat would have won just about any previous women’s heat at Pipe. That’s how far women’s surfing traveled in the space of single day on Saturday. It’s all the more dizzying when we remember that there’s still only been three editions of women’s competition at Pipeline. If this is what it looks like after just three years, well, it’s going to be one hell of a ride.
The final between Caity and Molly promised fireworks.
The Australian has established herself as one of the best Pipe surfers in women’s surfing and posted three of the top five wave scores on Saturday. But Caity Simmers has an extra magic and a rare talent for riding waves that defies easy definition. She seems to see and feel things on a wave that the rest of us will never see or feel. Her surfing is intuitive, unpredictable, and quite simply, insane.
It was the match-up we all anticipated. If the conditions had held up, we’d likely have seen a heat for the ages, but the wind shifted and the swell backed off at the worst possible moment. Instead, the heat came down to back-up scores, which felt anticlimactic. All the same, the two women kept the pressure on all the way to the end. That included a heavy wipe-out from Molly on a solid one at Backdoor.
The best wave of the heat, Molly’s 9.27 at Backdoor was a scorcher with a near-vertical drop into a thick, deep tube. Watching it, I couldn’t see how she — or anyone — could have surfed that wave better. Holy shit, I kept thinking. I’m supposed to be good at words over here, but that’s all I could think. Holy shit, look that drop, look at her fucking go.
After watching John John Florence in the previous heat, Caity Simmers looked impossibly small out in the lineup. According to her WSL bio, she’s 5’3”, and that might be overcalling it, honestly.
Her best wave of the final came at Backdoor. It wasn’t the biggest wave of the heat or even the biggest wave Caity rode that day. Wind texture scarred the face and crumbled the lip. Surfing instinctively, Caity threaded a tricky, technical barrel for 8.83.
As the clocked ticked down, Molly needed a three. After a day where she’d ridden a perfect ten at Pipe, that number felt absurdly small and easily within reach. But it was not to be. Too many close-outs later and the heat was done.
All I could think was how much more those two women had to give in that heat. And it served to confirm what the rest of the day was trying to tell us. At Pipeline, the women are here to stay.
Or, to borrow Caity Simmers’ banger quote, Pipeline for the fucking girls.
Sure, there are still women on the Championship Tour who want nothing to do with big Pipeline. There’s men on the Championship Tour who want nothing to with big Pipe.
And, I think that’s actually fine. “I respect everyone who wants a part of it and I respect anyone who doesn’t want a part of it,” said Caity after the final. Who am I to argue?
But Pipeline will always stand as the storied, pinnacle of surfing. To argue that the wave that’s held surfers in thrall for decades is somehow not relevant or doesn’t matter is absurd. It will always matter. And whatever professional surfing looks like now or in the future, surfers will always know the names of the best men and women out there.
In surfing, it’s the place where legends are made.
It’s taken far too long to get here, but at long last some of those legends will be women. In their post-heat comments, both Molly Pickles and Caity Simmers have paid tribute to the women who came before them, and rightly. It’s taken the concerted efforts of multiple generations of women surfers to take a sledgehammer to the walls that have stood in their way.
Because when all you hear is that girls don’t do it, girls can’t do it, it’s damn hard to go out and do it.
When sponsors pay a premium to the cute bikini models, the girls who want to charge big waves are forced to look elsewhere. When contests take place in knee-high Huntington Beach, the sport is going to select for girls who can surf knee-high Huntington. That’s meant that the girl who could surf the big days may never have even made it to contest surfing. She didn’t see anything there for her.
You have to see it to be it.
We say it all the time in women’s sports, but it’s nothing short of the truth. There are teen girls right now, who watched Caity Simmers and Molly Picklum in that final. What would be like, if I could do that, too? They felt that magical moment of possibility. They could picture themselves out there. They could imagine that it could happen to them. Go get it, girls. Get out there and be it.
And it’s worth remembering that we wouldn’t even be having this conversation without the efforts of women in Hawai’i including Keala Kennelly who pushed for a change in the permitting rules.
When women could no longer be excluded from contests on the North Shore, the door swung open for them. Pipeline could no longer be just for the boys.
Now with three years of heats behind them, the women are coming into their own at Pipe and it’s a joy to watch.
Even better, they’re still just getting started. What we saw on Saturday is the beginning of what promises to be a long and beautiful story of women’s surfing at Pipeline.
And there’s so much more to come. Pipeline is for the girls now, too.
