Robert Kelly Slater is an American professional surfer, best known for being crowned World Surf League champion a record 11 times. Slater is widely regarded as the greatest professional surfer of all time, and holds 56 Championship Tour victories. Slater is also the oldest surfer still active on the World Surf League, winning his 8th Billabong Pipeline Masters title at age 49.
Big wave surfing is a discipline within surfing in which experienced surfers paddle into, or are towed into, waves which are at least 20 feet high, on surf boards known as "guns" or towboards. Sizes of the board needed to successfully surf these waves vary by the size of the wave as well as the technique the surfer uses to reach the wave. A larger, longer board allows a rider to paddle fast enough to catch the wave and has the advantage of being more stable, but it also limits maneuverability and surfing speed.
Sofía Mulánovich Aljovín is a Peruvian surfer. She is a 3-time World Surfing Champion, 1 WSL and 2 ISA world championships,. She is the first Peruvian surfer ever to win a World Surf League World Championship Tour event and the first Latin American woman ever to win the World Title, which she did in 2004 In 2004, she won three out of the six World Championship Tour events, and finished the season as Absolute World Champion. Sofia is the only one Latin-american surfer to win 2 ISA World Championships. Sofia won the ISA Championships, 2004 in Salinas-Ecuador and 2019 in Miyazaki-Japan. Her main sponsor is Roxy.
Lisa Andersen is an American four-time world surfing champion. She won four successive world titles from 1994 to 1997. She was named ASP's Rookie of the Year in 1987. She was named as one of the 100 "Greatest Sportswomen of the Century" by Sports Illustrated for Women. She was named the "1998 Female Athlete of the Year" by Conde Nast Sports for Women magazine. She is a two-times winner of Surfer Magazine's Readers Poll. In 2002, she was inducted into the Surfer's Hall of Fame. In 2004, she was inducted into the Surfing Walk of Fame as that year's Woman of the Year.
Michael Eugene Fanning is an Australian professional surfer who was crowned champion of the Association of Surfing Professionals/World Surf League (ASP/WSL)'s World Tour in 2007, 2009 and 2013. In 2015, he survived a shark attack by what is suspected to be a great white shark during the J-Bay Open finals in Jeffreys Bay.
Stephanie Louise Gilmore is an Australian professional surfer and eight-time world champion on the Women's WSL World Tour.
Maya Reis Gabeira is a Brazilian big wave surfer. She surfed a 22.4 m (73 ft) high wave in Nazaré, Portugal in February 2020, recorded by Guinness World Records as the biggest wave ever surfed by a woman. She also held the previous record for biggest wave ever surfed by a woman, of 20.8 m (68 ft) established in January 2018.
Alana Rene Blanchard is an American professional surfer and model. Blanchard has surfed on the ASP World Tour.
Sally Fitzgibbons is an Australian professional surfer on the Association of Surfing Professionals World Tour (2009–2013). In June 2019, she was ranked No. 1 in the world for women's surfing after winning the Rio Pro.
Laura Louise "Lakey" Peterson is an American professional surfer. She has been ranked as high as No. 1 by the World Surf League, the highest professional level of women's surfing, and #6 on the ASP Women's World Ranking. In 2009, Peterson landed the first-ever aerial in NSSA women's competition history and won the title.
Julian Wilson is an Australian professional surfer who competes on the World Surf League Men's World Tour.
Tyler Wright is an Australian professional surfer on the WSL World Tour. She is a consecutive WSL Women's World Champion.
Laura Enever is an Australian professional surfer. Enever was the ASP Women's World Junior Champion in 2009. She made her professional debut in 2011.
Kelsey Malia Manuel is an American professional surfer. She won Rookie of the Year in 2012 and was ranked 5th on the 2014 ASP World Tour. In 2008, at the age of 14 she became the youngest surfer ever to win the U.S. Open of Surfing.
Nikki van Dijk is an Australian professional surfer. She has been a touring competitor in the World Surf League, the top flight of international professional surfing.
Women's surfing is thought to date back to the 17th century. One of the earliest records of women surfing is of princess Keleanohoana’api’api, also known as Kalea or the Maui Surf Riding Princess. It is rumored that Kalea was the trailblazer of surfing and could surf better than both men and women. A few centuries later in the mid-late 1800s, Thrum’s Hawaiian Annual reported that women in ancient Hawaii surfed in equal numbers and frequently better than men. Over the last 50 years, women's surfing has grown in popularity.
Felicity Tamasyn "Flick" Palmateer is an Australian professional surfer who competes at the World Surf League.
Bronte Macaulay is an Australian professional surfer. She competes in the World Surf League.
Caroline Marks is an American professional surfer and the 2023 WSL Women's World Tour Champion. She is a multiple national champion and the youngest female to compete in a World Surf League event. She is the youngest surfer to qualify for the women’s Championship Tour.
Matt Wilkinson is a professional Australian surfer. Known for being a goofyfooter, Wilkinson is from a small town called Copacabana in New South Wales. In 2016, he won his first two Championship Tour events.
