Women pro surfers: Battling the waves

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 December 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Patti Paniccia was a surfer back in the 1970s, determined to create a path to professional surfing for women, as well as men. Together with surf promoter, Fred Hemmings and surfer Randy Rarick, she founded IPS (International Professional Surfing), to create the very first men’s and women’s world tour in 1976. The women’s surf team – Sally Prange, Jericho Poppler, Rell Sunn, Becky Benson, Claudia Kravitz and Patti herself – were met with a barrage of ridicule and blatant sexism, but also had the time of their lives - from surfing the shark infested waters in South Africa, to drawing crowds of 20,000 Brazilians to the beaches in Rio de Janeiro. Together they opened the door for women's competitive professional surfing.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The dark is rising from the BBC World Service.
0:03.8	The powers of the dark are reaching out now steadily and stealthily all over this world.
0:10.0	Find out more at the end of this podcast.
0:23.4	Surfing connection with the ocean in the most powerful way I know.
0:28.0	Just you and your surfboard, harnessing the immense power of a wave,
0:32.0	taking you on the most exhilarating ride of your life.
0:36.0	But it can be dangerous, life threatening too.
0:39.0	So I paddle out, all of a sudden the horizon got dark, got black, with these huge set.
0:46.0	Lin Boyer, former world champion.
0:49.0	And I started scratching and there's no way I can make it past the set.
0:53.0	And the first wave broke way in front of me and I dove under, got smashed around,
1:00.0	came up the second one, same thing.
1:02.0	And by the third one I was so exhausted, it pushed me so far down that it was dark.
1:07.0	I couldn't see which wave was up.
1:09.0	And I started panicking, somehow I went the right way and I got up and I went...
1:14.0	And I saw all these stars and that was the closest to drowning that ever happened.
1:25.0	Welcome to women pro surfers battling the waves on the BBC World Service.
1:31.0	I'm Patty Paniccia and I was a pro surfer back in the 1970s.
1:35.0	Proliminaries showed it patty Paniccia.
1:38.0	So a couple of big names did not make it, but one who did was Lin Boyer.
1:44.0	Lin Boyer and I were part of a surfing revolution at a time when 1960s attitudes toward women as sex objects were still powerful.
1:53.0	There were surf posters you could get, you know.
	...

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