In less than a week, professional surfing has moved from its spiritual home in an island paradise to man-made waves, desert heat and a step into the unknown.
Two-time Australian world champion Tyler Wright has found herself the reluctant poster girl of the uncomfortable, for some unfathomable, shift.
Tyler Wright has wrestled with competing in the UAE.Credit: WSL
Wright is a confirmed starter for Friday’s (AEDT) inaugural Surf Abu Dhabi Pro in the UAE. She wasn’t always.
Wright is the only openly gay surfer in either men’s or women’s events and has wrestled with competing in a country where homosexuality is illegal.
The 30-year-old broke an almost two-year drought when she won Sunday’s Pipeline Pro, surfing’s most enduring event on Hawaii’s North Shore.
Along with the rest of the WSL, she has made the milk run of flights across the Pacific and Atlantic for the first Championship Tour event in the Middle East.
Kelly Slater’s new wave pool in Abu Dhabi.Credit: YouTube
Details of the WSL’s three-year commitment to stage events at a man-made wave pool (developed by Modon in partnership with Kelly Slater Wave Company) have never been made public, but sees surfing join sports like soccer, tennis, basketball, golf and UFC in accepting multi-million dollar deals to take their competitions to the region.
“Sportswashing” is the criticism levelled at pro surfing’s privately owned governing body. The WSL’s announcement of the Surf Abu Dhabi deal last October was met with scathing responses from Wright’s wife Lilli and her brother Mikey, himself a former pro surfer, along with big-wave star Keala Kennelly.
Both pointed out that Wright was the first surfer to wear the LGBTQ+ pride flag while competing, with Mikey writing on Instagram; “So much for equality and equal rights, only when it’s convenient to WSL. You have supported the LGBTQ flag on her shoulder but now you want to strip it and be hush hush to get her to a location that she’s at risk of this punishment.”
The common consensus is that Wright’s family was speaking out when the professional surfer couldn’t, as she weighed up travelling to the UAE. Lilli Wright spelled out why, too.
“I can’t not acknowledge missing this event would put her career at a huge disadvantage over the next three years that this location will be used,” Lilli said. “Tyler’s queerness should not have to be a burden or an obstacle in her workplace.”
The WSL has been approached for comment on whether Wright will again wear the pride flag on her shoulder, as she has done since 2020.
Apparently, no decision has been made yet.
Wright has kept a low profile of late and has been unavailable for comment outside of official WSL broadcasts, most notably after her Pipeline triumph. Wrangling an interview with an event winner is typically a formality.
Tyler Wright famously took a knee during the 2020 Tweed Coast Pro.Credit: Matt Dunbar/World Surf League
As a veteran of women’s surfing, Wright has battled debilitating injuries in the past few years while the likes of Caity Simmers, Molly Picklum and Erin Brooks threaten to sweep a new generation to power.
Wright has also been professional surfing’s most forthright voice for some time – she doesn’t suffer fools or foolish questions, and has been withering at times in her assessment of surf culture.
Two years ago on the eve of a finals tilt at her third world title, she told this masthead that “sometimes I get so let down by the surfing community that I feel like quitting.
“For years I wrestled with my anger towards surfing because of how it’s positioned itself in the world of progressiveness. ‘We’re counterculture, we’re inclusive’. My experience of surfing from a young age was definitely not that’.”
Tyler Wright and her wife Lilli during the El Salvador Pro in 2023.Credit: Beatriz Ryder/World Surf League
In the same interview, Wright said she was “being told to keep quiet, keep my head down” when controversy erupted around the WSL’s adoption of a transgender policy to meet Olympic rules, a policy Wright personally loved.
She did not specify who told her to keep quiet.
In terms of surfing’s multi-million dollar Abu Dhabi venture, concerns are growing louder.
Louder it must be said, than the WSL’s partnership with El Salvador since 2022, where the self-declared “world’s coolest dictator” Nayib Bukele has invested heavily in surfing and tourism to the backdrop of a troubling human rights record around deaths in state custody and alleged enforced disappearances.
The Surf Abu Dhabi man-made wave has been built on Hudayriyat Island and is the longest break of its kind at more than 500 metres in length.
Previous wave-pool events on tour have been hit-and-miss for pro-surfers. Olympic silver medallist Jack Robinson spoke for many when he described competitions at man-made breaks as often “repetitive” and “boring”, at least using current technologies.
The WSL has trumpeted the Surf Abu Dhabi event as a “destination ready to welcome surfers from all levels and communities and nurture a new generation of surfers in the region.”
For plenty, though, it’s uncomfortable to say the least.
