Two-time world champion Tyler Wright made surfing history when she slid into the waters of Maui’s Honolua Bay on Monday morning by becoming the first professional surfer to compete with a Pride flag on her jersey.
It may seem like a small gesture in a sport that projects a progressive, laid-back culture, but Wright hopes to ignite long-overdue conversations about the realities of LGBTQ+ athletes who surf. She poured over the decision after spending 14 months recovering from a devastating illness — with the help and love of her partner giving her new-found strength and belief in herself.
“I have an opportunity to show up and be exactly who I am,” Wright said via phone from Maui. “This is how I want to show up in my surfing. I want to show up with my humanity first and foremost and with my values. My values are equality and inclusion, that’s what I want to represent.”
Like most professional athletes, surfers wear jerseys with their name and number on the back. World Surf League athletes, who come from across the globe, also wear the flag of their home country on both shoulders. Wright, a 26-year-old Australian, made the choice to start the 2021 WSL season with the Progress Pride flag—which highlights marginalized people of color and trans individuals—as a public nod to her queer identity.
“I don’t want to say I was hiding before, but now I am encouraged enough to lean into who I am,” Wright said. “I’m not scared to say, ‘Look, this is what I stand for.’ I want to show others that surfing can be a welcoming space for LGBTQ+ athletes.”
Wright isn’t the first professional surfer to compete as an out athlete — that distinction goes to 2019 Women’s Big Wave World Title winner Keala Kennelly — but she is the most high-profile. A back-to-back world champion in 2016 and 2017, Wright is a veteran of the world surfing stage and the winner of 13 Championship Tour events. Wright, who comes from a surfing family, has been one of the sport’s brightest stars, a fixture on the scene after winning her first Tour title at the age of 14.
In a year when athletes have taken a knee or staged wildcat strikes to protest for racial and social justice, it would be tempting to write off the Pride flag as a performative gesture, but Wright’s statement is more than a token nod to woke politics. It’s the culmination of a long, arduous journey and marks a major step forward in surfing’s conservative political culture.
For much of the past two years, Wright had been unable to compete as she battled post-viral syndrome brought on by a bout of influenza A she contracted in South Africa in July 2018. She was bedridden for almost 14 months, suffering from fatigue, headaches and a brain fog that left large gaps in her memory. Not only was her body devastated, but she was dealing with an emotional reckoning of who she was as a person and an athlete.
“I was away from the tour, from surfing, for almost two years,” she said. “It was a really hard time, and I had a lot of things stripped away from me. I had to sit with who I was and then think about the person I was presenting to the world. I felt like there was a bit of a disconnection between that.”
Wright said she made it through that time with the help of her family and her former partner, singer Alex Lynn. It was falling in love, Wright said, that helped her realize the need to be more open about her queer identity.
“I feel in love with an incredible human being, and that opened my world to a whole new world that I had never realized before,” Wright said.
At first, Wright, who is bisexual, kept the relationship quiet, and only family members and a few friends knew about it.
“It was kind of one of those things … I just showed up at dinner one day with my partner at the time and that was it. I will always remember telling my younger brother (pro surfer Mikey Wright) and his reaction was just, he high-fived me and just said, ’Fuck yeah,’” Wright said.
Wright went public with her relationship in an episode of “60 Minutes” in Australia that aired in May of 2019. She also posted about her break up with Lynn on social media, with a touching photo of the two mid-kiss. Because of her illness and then the COVID outbreak, her personal and professional life had yet to really overlap, aside from one Tour event at Maui in 2019. Despite being out, she still found herself battling her own internalized homophobia and surfing’s hetronormative culture.
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“I was raised in the same society as everyone else is, and that is pretty sexist, homophobic and racist. I was adament that I didn’t want to be known as a gay world champion, I didn’t want to be associated with the LGBTQ community,” Wright said of an especially painful period in her life. “It’s been a long journey to get here.”
Asked whether she thought surfing had been welcoming to LGBTQ+ athletes in the past, Wright’s answer was short and unequivocal.
“No.”
While the sport of surfing has its origins in the rebellious, counter culture movement, much of the modern surfing complex is remarkably conservative, dealing with the same issues that plague many male-dominated sports, like homophobia and toxic masculinity. There is a disconnect between how the sport is marketed — as a cool, progressive space — and the reality of what surf culture is.
“The ocean may not judge based on sexuality or gender identity, but many surfers do,” Surfer magazine Editor-in-Chief Todd Prodanovich wrote in a recent cover story about LGBTQ+ surf history. Prodanovich went on to say that while homophobic slurs aren’t as common as they once were, surf culture—which is mainly rich, white and has it’s power centers in conservative enclaves—still has a long way to go in creating safe, inclusive spaces for all athletes.
“The problem persists in different forms. You might see Stab’s Instagram post about renaming the ‘sex change’ skateboard trick the ‘Caitlyn Jenner’ in surfing. Or maybe you’ll find the post on a San Diego surf shop’s page where Kelly Slater calls a shaper he’s feuding with ‘sexually confused,’ ” he wrote.
In the past, the mere hint of a surfer being gay was enough to get sponsorships dropped and media coverage taken away.
Kennelly, who said she stopped “trying to hide who she was” around 2007, has spoken out about the pressure she felt by her sponsors to present herself as heterosexual.
“It’s like, ‘You don’t have to have sex with me to keep your job, but you have to make me want to have sex with you,’” she told The New York Times. “It’s fun seeing you in a bikini, but it’s not fun seeing you charge giant waves.’ ”
The topic has also been explored in depth in the film Out in the Line Up, which documents the struggles of surfing’s LGBTQ+ community.
“What would surfing look like if it was equal, inclusive and safe?” Wright said on the WSL’s The Lineup podcast. “That’s something I’ve really reflected on. What direction are we going in?”
While problematic remnants of the broader culture remain, the industry reaction to Wright’s decision to wear a Pride flag shows things have at least progressed marginally forward. Wright said she had no fear of losing her long-time sponsorship contract with surf brand Rip Curl and that the World Surf League did not hesitate to back her decision.
“They have supported me the entire time, from start to finish, and are still supporting me today. I’m incredibly grateful to be a part of the league that embraces standing up for equality and inclusion.”
“It was a short internal conversation on our part,” WSL CEO Erik Logan said. “We didn’t need to have meetings about it or take a vote. Our main mission is to support our athletes however we can and we’re very proud of Tyler and her decision.”
This isn’t the first time that surfers have requested differing flags on their jerseys to honor their identity and heritage. In 2019, New Zealand surfer Ricardo Christie competed with the Maori flag on his right shoulder and Australian surfer Soli Bailey paid homage to his Indigenous Australian roots by wearing the Aboriginal flag.
Wright understands, and is grateful for, the many who came before her in surfing and elsewhere that paved the way for her decision.
“This is my way of honoring that and saying thank you for inspiring me as well,” she said. “I also honor the people that have come before me in surfing, because I know they’ve struggled, I know the discrimination that they have faced.”
Wright said she found inspiration not just in surfers like Kennelly, but athletes like the WNBA’s Sue Bird and USWNT icon Megan Rapinoe whose examples helped show her the power of representation.
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“I have so much gratitude for those who have come out and spoken about it, for owning who they are. These women, these athletes, they own their sexuality, they own their gender, they own their identity, they own every part of them, and for me, I’ve taken so much from them,” she said.
It was through watching the WNBA stand for social justice and the Black Lives Matter movement that Wright started to think about her platform, her privilege and how she could best use it. Their example is what spurred her to protest before the Tweed Coast Pro in mid-September, where she cut into her heat and took a knee for 439 seconds —one second each to honor the 439 First Nations persons in Australia who have lost their lives in police custody since 1991.
“I personally feel like I have a responsibility, as well, being in the position I’m in and with the platform that I have,” Wright said of her burgeoning activism.
While taking a knee and wearing a Pride flag can seem inconsequential in certain sports spaces, they’re a bold step forward in a sport that has long prided itself on being apolitical.
“Surfing is a part of society, and I don’t think we’re exempt from any of these issues that society is facing,” Wright said. “We’re founded on heteronormative, patriarchal ways and ideology. We have homophobia, we have sexism, we have racism, and I feel like once you know more, you can do more.”
Right now, surfing is just beginning to have these conversations out in the open. For years, groups like Black Girl Surf Club, Benny’s Club and Queer Surf Club have long been challenging the sport’s dominate narrative and pushing from the fringes for more inclusion. Wright is joining the small chorus of pro surfers, like Selema Masekela, who have been leading the way in the fight for change.
“For a long time, I did my best to be like, ‘oh cool, we’re all bros,’ even though people said dumb, racist shit to me all the time,” Masekela said on The Lineup. “Whenever I had the chance, I started to speak and be more vocal…but I did the dance until I decided I can’t dance anymore…I just wanted to be seen for what I had to give.”
Earlier this summer, as social justice protests swept across America, surfers hosted paddle outs for inclusion and equality. The unrest over issues of race in the country and around the world, became something the culture and industry could no longer casually brush aside.
It’s too early to say if Wright’s activism will spur other surfers to speak out or take a stand in similar ways, but she hopes her actions support those that have come before her and help push the sport into examining their deep and troubled history with race and inclusion.
“Keeping surfing apolitical isn’t something I agree with,” Wright said on The Lineup podcast. “People say it’s in the best interest of surfing, but it’s really in the interest of hetro, white men.”
Wright knows she has a long way to go, in her surfing and in her activism, and is just starting to find the true power of her voice. But as, she charges into the 2021 season, she’s taken the pain and struggle —physical and emotional—of the past two years and fashioned it into something she hopes will lead to lasting change.
“I’m not scared. I’m proud to be a part of the community,” Wright said. “I’m exactly who I am today and that is beautiful.”