Stef Gilmore – The girl next door surfs better than you
The girl next door surfs better than you Photo: Swilly.com.au
Kristy Theissling: You’ve just been to Indo. How was it, and what boards did you take?
Stephanie Gilmore: I took my two shorties and one big one. When you go to Indo, you get pretty relaxed and because the waves are so perfect, just about anything works. I use fin systems in all my boards so I changed the fins around a bit. Normally I use the DH2 – they’re my favourite fin. They’ve got a wide base like the Kelly fin but it has a rake like an MF or a YU. Darren Handley, my shaper, said to take a bit more of a gunny board too, so that’s why I took a 6’2 as well as two 5’11s.
KT: How did DH start shaping your boards?
SG: It was actually through a friend of mine, Karina Petroni. She was getting a couple of boards off Darren. I was about 13 and was starting to compete and I wanted to get more custom boards under my feet. Karina and her brother took me to his factory and they were like, “Darren, meet Steph.” I gave him the length I wanted and left the rest up to him. I’d always looked up to DH: he was the local King of Boards because he had Mick Fanning and Joel Parkinson on his team, and everyone who ripped seemed to be riding his boards. Three days after I met him he gave me two brand new boards. I was completely spun out, it was the craziest thing I’d ever heard of – two brand new boards in three days, ready to go! And our relationship has been awesome ever since.
He’s keen to see me do well and for me to better understand not only the equipment that I’m riding but his shaping process, which has to be one of the most important things in any professional surfer’s career. He just keeps getting better and better.
KT: How do you approach a new board with Darren?
SG: At first I was pretty blasé: I didn’t really know what to say to him. I guess like any normal person I was a little scared to give him negative feedback about a board. But as your relationship with a shaper grows, you realise that they actually thrive off constructive criticism, because then they go back and they fix it or try something different.
Before an event, I’ll sit down with Darren and go over boards that have worked really well for me in the past at that particular break. I’ll pick out the board I rode the year before and say, “This board went really well, let’s try something similar to this.” Or maybe, “I’ve lost a bit of weight this year, maybe we’ll tone the board down a bit, you know, shave a bit off the rails, or whatever.” It’s pretty relaxed between Darren and I. We’ve got a great little friendship and he just treats me like any other of his good friends and team riders.
KT: Have board shapes been different for females? Or is it generally the same shape for guys as it would be for girls?
SG: Yeah, I think in the past they have been different. That’s why guys have perhaps struggled to shape good boards for girl surfers, because they have a misperception that because the body shape is different they need a totally different board. I try out a lot of mixed curves, like Parko’s old models… They all seem to go well with me.
Stephanie creates a moment of weightless glide with speed and DHD. Photo: Frank.
KT: What about the chicks and their boards on tour?
SG: Back-in-the-day I always saw lots of girls on tour riding really big boards, even though they were small girls. I don’t know if that was because the shapers were men and they were thinking that the girls needed extra buoyancy or help with their paddling. Now everyone’s kind of shortened down. A lot of the girls on tour are probably 5’5” or under: there’s only a few of us that are over 5’8 or 5’9 – I’m 5’10. But I don’t think there’s a specific set of surfboard dimensions for girls at all. No way! Everyone’s completely different.
KT: What’s the board you enjoy riding most?
SG: I really like old-school boards, single fins preferably; they’re heaps of fun. But my staple board would be a DH short-board, with dimensions around 6’0 by 18 ¾ by 2 1/8. About halfway through last year I shortened down to a 5’11, which seemed to work well. It was a little bit shorter, a little bit wider, with a single concave from the nose down and then a double concave throughout the fins, with a rounded square tail.
KT: You like fishes. What variations do you like?
SG: I love surfing a short board and finding new ways to generate speed. To get speed from an actual wave is different to jumping on a fish, which delivers speed straight from the board itself. It’s a different feeling. It’s almost like a lazy board. You don’t have to work as hard to gain momentum because straight from the takeoff you’re cruisin’ fast down the line …
But then after a while it can get boring, because you can’t get as innovative as a high performance short board, especially when you start adding fins and different tails and stuff. I haven’t ridden too many different variations of fishes – I just enjoy a little egg shape single fin, or I guess the big craze at the moment is the Merrick Pods or the Biscuits and Fishcuts. I’ve ridden a few shapes, and the really round boards seem to fit in the curve of the wave really well.
