54 SurfGirl Magazine
shock to me. After that I started to live a bit of a punk
life –lots of sport but also lots of parties with drugs and
alcohol. There were a lot of hard drugs in the area at
the end of the 70s, so my mum agreed to send me to
California for the summer to visit one my sister’s friends
who had a windsurfing business in Santa-Barbara. I was
terrible at windsurfing, so I asked her if someone could
take me surfing. She took me to the Channel Islands
Surfboards shop, where Tom was working a bit to
save money to pay for his expenses to go to the World
Championship in Australia. He was super keen to take me
surfing and we felt in love right away. When I met Tom, I
quit smoking and drinking and we trained a lot – it was a
big relief and great fun.Where did you live then and what was your lifestyle
like?
We had an apartment between Rincon and Santa Barbara,
so we would dawn patrol a lot to surf Rincon before the
crowd. Then we would have one of those huge American
breakfasts with eggs, bacon, juice and pancakes, before
surfing again, and again, till dark. When it was flat we
would go to the pool to train, or up and down the coast
searching for waves – sometimes at the Ranch or even
further north. We had a great surf community around
us, and it was a fun and easy life. Sometimes I’d work at
Channel Islands Surf Shop and I did a semester at City
College; the rest of the time we were travelling mainly to
Australia, Hawaii and France.Did you teach your kids to surf at an early age, is
that how Lee-Anne got so good?
Well yes, we shared our love of the ocean and the surflifestyle with Lee-Anne and Nathan, but never pushed
them into competing. In fact, I was so concerned they
would get pressure from everybody because of Tom’s
world titles that I pretty much had them try everything else
you can imagine: judo, dance, hockey, hip-hop, basketball.
And then one day they both came to me, when they were
12 and 10 years old, and asked if they could finally go to
the surf club down the road. Lee-Ann started training hard
in the cold winters as well, she learned quickly. She’s a
very determined person.It’s 50 years of Rip Curl this year – when did you join
and what did you do when you first joined?
I was always familiar with the brand as Tom was and still is
sponsored by Rip Curl.
I was hired to work for Rip Curl Europe 15 years ago
as PR manager and on the women’s strategy. The idea
was to put together a network of PR agencies all around
Europe, so I started with that. I feel very lucky to work
there because we all get along well, the brand itself is really
cool and innovative, and pretty much all the crew loves the
ocean, surfing and searching.How different is women’s surfing from when you first
started competing?
It’s amazing how the level has shot up so fast. And to see
all the women in the water, all ages and all year-round,
feels really good. Most of them are concerned with
environmental issues and they love travelling and the surf
lifestyle. They look happy, now they know the feeling, and
that’s brilliant!Family time with Tom Curren.Surfing Biarritz.