(07/15/2009) The number-one-ranked professional woman surfer in the world sledded toward shore on her belly after finishing up a rather small, sloppy wave at Ditch Plain on Sunday morning. She was greeted with “You
 Russell Drumm
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shoulda been here yesterday,” that haunting phrase made famous by the “Endless Summer” movie way back in 1966 — two decades before Stephanie Gilmore was born.
The waves were, in fact, better on Saturday morning. A small groundswell from the east was wrapped into Ditch, making for some small, but long and shapely, lefts. Gilmore, 21, is an Australian who was ranked number one in the world in 2007 and 2008. She is not likely to want for waves.
She and her sister, Whitney Gilmore, and Ava Warbrick, were in Montauk on Sunday checking out the surf they’d heard about and shooting video as part of the surf star’s documentary travelogue — something to do, she said, while globe-trotting from one surf contest to the next.
The last took place at Easter time at Bells Beach in Western Australia as part of the Association of Surfing Professionals tour. Her next competition will be in Sydney, Australia, in September, then Portugal, then Peru, and on to Hawaii for November and December.
From Montauk, she will head to California to attend the ESPY awards in Los Angeles. The ESPYs, hosted by the ESPN cable sports channel, honor sporting excellence. Gilmore was nominated in the women’s surfing category last year. “Justin Timberlake played,” she remembered with a smile.
Gilmore’s chief professional sponsor is the Rip Curl company, maker of wetsuits and beachwear. She also rides for Ford in Australia and the Sanitarium health food company.
With Ms. Warbrick’s video camera running, the engaging young woman collared a few local surfers to poll their attitudes about the sport. She asked about favorite spots, evolving board shapes, changing surfing styles, localism, and with unblinking blue eyes and a thick accent from Down Under, “How do you feel about girls in the water?”
The question was turned back on her as one of the top female surfers in the world. She said she often wondered if male surfers were put off by girls in the lineup. She suggested that what might be called a female approach to surfing could be good for the sport.
“I think girls have thought they had to surf like men. We might have a more graceful style,” one that she suggested was being incorporated into a more general surfing style. She said the era of women trying to mimic male surfing was possibly ending.
“We were competing to look like men. More females are realizing they can add more rhythm, lose the awkward stance, use their feminine side.” Gilmore said that in the past, competing surfers were judged on style, power, speed, and flow. “Flow’s been taken out. I don’t know why. I wonder how long you can stay at the top without [adopting] an erratic style,” she said.
The top-ranked athlete said she hoped the sexes would take the best of their individual approaches and create something new. That’s how her surfing appears to have evolved. Those who missed her go-out on Sunday can view her style by looking up a number of short videos online.
Stephanie Gilmore was born in Murwillumbah, New South Wales, and started at the age of 9 in the waves of Kingscliff on Australia’s eastern Gold Coast. In 2005, at 17, the “natural foot” (right foot forward) surfer won the prestigious Roxy Pro Gold Coast contest, a competition she won again this year.
In 2007, as a rookie professional, she won the Billabong Pro at Honolua Bay, Maui, the Mancora Peru Classic, as well as two Australian pro events, the Australian Beachley Classic and the Rip Curl Pro at Bells Beach. The following year she took firsts in two Hawaiian competitions, one of them at Sunset Beach, and won events in France and Peru.
The world traveler was asked to identify her favorite surf spots. “Mainland Mexico and the islands off Sumatra,” she said. The latter choice precipitated a conversation about the pros and cons of “discovering” surf spots in remote, third world places.
On the one hand, the islands of Indonesia, with perfect, uncrowded, and consistent Indian Ocean waves, had been like paradise for traveling surfers. “For so many years, the kids there were happy to watch,” she said. “Then, someone gives them a surfboard. You want to give back, so soon the locals have more surfboards.” The inevitable result, she said, was a more crowded lineup and often strained feelings between locals and visitors.
She admitted that contests had also been blamed for spoiling the purity of surfing in the minds of some. “I love competing. Some don’t feel it’s what surfing’s about. I don’t know. I think it adds spice.”