The culmination of a long surfing season for the athletes of the World Surf League is coming to an end. The Rip Curl WSL Final is just days away and number two-ranked Tyler Wright is getting ready. The Australian native has flown to Southern California in order to set herself up in preparation for the waves at the surf spot known as Lower Trustles but winning her third World Championship is not her only focus. Wright is enjoying the ride and after such a long career in the water, she is still learning new things about herself.
Wright won her second World Title back in 2017. Following that year she has been dealing with injuries and has been working herself back into the swing of things. Since 2017 the landscape of the WSL Championship Tour has changed. Instead of a surfer gaining the most amount of points throughout the year to win the title, now the top five surfers enter into the last event of the year at Trestles and battle it out for a one-day winner-takes-all event. This is Wright's first time competing in that format and she is sitting in the number two spot. Fansided caught up with Wright about a week out from the competition to talk about the uncertainties of the contest and her future in the sport.
"There's a certain level of acceptance when it comes to our sport of, kind of just the unknown, and like, uncertainty," she said. "I know people struggle with that a lot, but I think it's one of those ones where like, I know, I've really had to accept the unknowns I've had. I love guarantees, I'm an athlete, I love controllables, I love being able to guarantee myself something, but realistically, I have none. Going into this day I've known I could be world champ, or could not be. And it's like, it doesn't change, the amount of effort I put in, it doesn't change the amount of engagement that I have on the day, doesn't change the amount of connection that I have with myself on the day."
Tyler Wright will be representing Team Australia at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games
In addition to making the Rip Curl WSl Final, Wright has also provisionally qualified to represent Australia at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in France. Although the majority of the Games will be held in Paris, the surfers will compete on the French Polynesian island of Tahiti. The wave that will be the site for this contest is named Teahupoʻo and is known for its dangerous conditions and barreling strength. This break was the location of the last WSL competition and Wright has been vocal about her fear of this monster wave. Now she must get ready to face this fear again on the Olympic stage.
"I'm building a relationship with Teahupo'o," she said. "I've never shied away from the fact that it's the only wave that really truly scares me. The amount of fear that I have and how actually scared I am of that wave, it's sometimes overpowering for me. I am building my relationship and I'm building my trust and I'm building an approach that I really like and connect with and just building my connection with the ocean there. I find that those things are best viewed through a relationship dynamic."
Wright is surfing at the elite level and heading into a situation that could add another World Title to her resume, but that is not the end all be all in her mind. She spoke about a moment on tour this year when her thinking began to change and she began to become more aware of her intentions and the momentum of surfing as a whole.
"I had a moment in El Salvador where it was after the final one," she said. "I think that moment for me was when I kind of, it's not often that, like, I push through a lot of different things because I genuinely want to be the best version of me, I genuinely have a high level of engagement, of investing in kinda like how I see things because I feel like, for so long, you know, the standard of competition, in surfing was just a male standard. And I just think that's not good enough for me, it never has, I've never taken anything from it, I look at it, and I'm like, it's not it. I don't connect for that. So I think it was just, I just feel like I've taken back the social conditioning of, you know, holding the males standard, like the men are the standard and really taken back to sort of ownership of being a woman in sport, and also what that means, and there is no limitation for what I can do."
Fans will get to watch Wright and the other members of the top five both male and female compete at Lower Trestles. The waiting period for the Rip Curl WSL Final will begin on Sept. 8 and run through Sept. 16. The contest will run on the best conditioned day in that time frame. Fans can tune on on WorldSurfLeague.com or on WSL on YouTube.