19 minute read
We’re stoked to announce that professional Big Wave surfer Laura Crane has joined Dryrobe® as an ambassador!
It’s been a monumental start to 2025, with Laura making history as the first British woman to qualify and receive an invitation to a Word Surf League (WSL) big wave event in February.
She was one out of three women who competed at the WSL Tudor Nazaré Big Wave challenge, and despite breaking her foot during the comp, she described it as one of the best days of her life.
Back home to recover from Big Wave season and a broken foot, we caught up with Laura to chat about everything from her rigorous training regime to the deep motivation behind being a professional Big Wave surfer.
Laura first hit the professional surf scene as a teenager and has fought through crippling industry pressures and mental health challenges - topics and stories that deserve independent features themselves.
Get ready to feel motivated and find out why Laura is so determined to inspire and encourage other young girls and women to pursue their dreams.
Firstly, massive congratulations on becoming the first British woman to receive an invitation to a WSL big wave event - what an epic start to 2025! How did it feel when you found out that you’d be competing at the WSL Tudor Nazare Big Wave challenge?
It was incredible. I think, for me, it was an accumulation of a lot of things. It was the fact that I had worked really hard to get to that standard of being ready to compete in the WSL.
Getting the nod from them that I was ready and that they deemed me worthy of competing was a huge, huge deal for me in so many ways. Since I was super young, I really wanted to be respected as a professional surfer, and there were many things that I had kind of dreamed of for that moment. For 15-year-old Laura, it was incredibly surreal to be respected for my physical ability as an athlete.
It was a really special moment for me. I cried. It was a lot of relief. I'd had lots of doubt from exteriors of whether I was going to really make it in the big wave world, and for me making it into that contest was kind of the seal of approval from the biggest body and surfing. It was a big, proud moment.
What were the highlights of your first big wave comp?
Definitely putting the rash vest on.
I hadn’t put a comp jersey on since I was 21. So that was definitely the moment where I was like, “Wow, okay, there are thousands of people who wish that they could put this jersey on today, and I am one of the very few.” That was definitely a really surreal moment.
Arriving to the lineup, on the back of the jet ski, there were so many things and so many times that I had visualized that moment of pulling up to the contest. Just being in it fully was definitely the nicest part of it - being able to enjoy all the moments that I could before I broke my foot!
The biggest thing for that day was just like a real “F**k you!” to everybody who'd never believed in me and had doubted my ability. Being on that stage with the best surfers in the world and knowing that I did deserve to be there, no matter what anyone had ever said to me. I think that was my biggest takeaway from that day. And to be proud to be wearing the jersey, for sure.
Sport in general, has always played a huge role in your life. How would you say it’s shaped your life?
Sport for me has always been my superpower. It's saved me from myself many times. It’s saved me from lots of tough situations that I've been through in my life and had to navigate, and having the outlet of sport and surfing, in particular, has definitely always managed to bring me back to Laura.
It’s kept me true to my values, and there have been moments when I've been further away from sport or surfing, and that definitely ends up bringing me further away from the person that I truly am.
I think it's a really good measuring stick for me to see how aligned I'm living. If I'm doing a lot of sport and I'm looking after myself and I'm surfing and I'm enjoying it - and enjoyment is a big, big thing - if I'm enjoying my sport, then it generally means I'm on track. It means that I'm heading towards something, that I'm working towards something. Everything else in my life seems to be a lot more streamlined when I have a physical or sporting goal.
It keeps me in line. It keeps me accountable, keeps me dedicated, and motivated. It's all of it.
What makes you feel passionate/ enjoy about big wave surfing?
I think it's the work. It’s the amount of hours that you put in that only you see. It's the accumulation of so many small factors all having to come together in the perfect moment, the perfect time, and just the amount of trust that you build when you’re chasing these crazy, huge waves is immense. You have to have a huge amount of self-trust within you as a person, within your physical body. I think everything that is able to be controlled by you, you have to have the most tip-top condition of that remote control and for me, it's definitely been a journey.
I've struggled with my mental health a lot, and to have a purpose to work on and something to obsess over is actually really important for me. I'm incredibly driven, and I'm somebody that when I put my mind to things, I can achieve incredible things. But if I don't put my mind to things, sometimes I can also put myself in a really dark place, and I'm very aware of that, and I know when things are starting to go in that direction.
Big wave surfing has given me the purpose I think that I always knew I wanted and that I always knew that I could achieve. It's given me the confidence and the courage to physically go for the dreams rather than just sit there and watch other people get theirs and mine pass by. It gave me the courage that I could go and get all the things that I really wanted.
Do you feel fear when you're big wave surfing, and if so, how do you handle those feelings?
Yes, definitely feel fear. I think anybody who says they don't feel some fear when they surf Nazaré, must be lying! Or they’ve been there for a really, really long time, but of course, you feel fear.
There are moments of doubt, I think that’s what we all feel fear, whether it's a job interview at a new office or whether it's the biggest wave of your life, we’re all really amazing at creating worst-case scenarios which, nine times out of ten, never really happen. But the thing about big wave surfing is physically you have to be prepared for every worst outcome. And that’s given me so many lessons for life when it comes to fear because there are so many times in my day when I fear things. From the first thing in the morning when I wake up and have to go and do an ice bath, and I'm fearing the ice bath, but then I get over it. And then there's the next thing that I get fear from, which could be doing emails, which for somebody like me is not a very easy thing to do. I catastrophize it in my head, and I get emails done, and I'm like, “Okay, that wasn't actually that bad.”
I think it's obviously an immense fear of what could go wrong because it's life and death. There’s a very real chance that every time you go in the water you might not come out. I think we're all very aware of that and anybody who isn't, may be doing it for other reasons.
For me there's always been an element of if it doesn't feel right, then we don't go. And a massive, massive thing in that is knowing the difference between fear and your gut. I've been really lucky to work on this in the last year and to become more in tune with myself.
There's always going to be fear in everything that we do, but I think the difference between fear and your gut is that fear is irrational, sometimes, and your gut feeling always is rational and knows what's best. So there's always a little bit less emotion when you listen to your gut, and when there's fear, there’s lots of emotion and lots of feeling.
That's been a really exciting thing to navigate, and understand am I just fearful because I'm doubting my ability, or is my gut telling me today is not the day? Knowing the difference between those two is SO helpful in so many other things, not just big wave surfing.
I think fear is definitely there, but it's about how we manage it and how we use it in the best way possible. Fear often comes from us not feeling like we can achieve the things that we want to, and sometimes we just have to give a middle finger to fear and do it anyway.
How do you prepare your mind and body to take on and withstand the impact of 60ft+ waves?
Kind of the same as what I've always done. It's so funny because I feel that my life has always been preparing me for this. Every mental illness I've been through, or physical ailment, has really prepared me to be strong in the face of all of these things that I'm now coming up against, and there's definitely a hell of a lot of physical training, which I've always really loved.
Then there are hard parts of it too, like there are some days when you don't want to get out of bed or go training, but you do it because you know that you need to do it for that moment when you're under a 60-foot wave and you'll be like, “Oh God, I didn't train enough” or “I didn't do this enough.”
Every athlete is totally different, but for me, I like to start my season knowing that I have no doubt in my body that I know I am as ready as possible because then it makes you less fearful and makes you make fewer silly decisions in the face of fear.
I do a lot of physical training, so we do a lot of weight training and loads of cycling, which is perfect on the Devon hills. I do lots of cold water immersions, so I do either cold swims in the ocean or ice baths, breathwork in and out of the water sessions, yoga…It's pretty endless - just stuff every day.
You've spoken about finding your true self through big wave surfing, saying, 'I found the Laura she was always meant to be.' How would you describe her, and what would younger Laura think of her?
I think she'd be really proud. It's funny because when I grew up, there wasn't really a space for strong female surfers. It was all about little bikinis and being as appealing as you possibly could for the male surfer, which is effectively where we used to sit, I suppose.
As somebody who has always been a lover of sport and wants to get the most out of myself physically and win, it was really hard to feel that nobody valued that back then. As women, we've made massive changes in short amounts of time, but I think, it was only some 15 years ago that I first had this dream of being a pro surfer, and people laughed at me. People laughed that I was from the UK, that I was a girl, and I wanted to travel the world and be paid to surf.
I think slowly over time, I listened to what everybody else said, and I parked my dream.
I didn't think it was possible because nobody wanted to see it. I didn't really have anyone to look up to at that age, women who were doing the things that I wanted to do, and neither did all the girls around me. We just had each other, and the women who had been forced to follow the path that they had.
So 15-year-old Laura is looking at me now, thinking, “Thank God we didn't listen.” And the support of my family and the people that really are close to me know who the true Laura is, and that she's a fighter and I never give up no matter how hard it gets. I think for my 15-year-old self, that's really what I needed to see.
I needed to see that women could go after their dreams, be told no, and still say yes and that they didn't need a whole industry to believe in them to succeed.
Last year, you were the front page story of Huck and shared the powerful statement, “We don’t have to change the minds of men; it’s about changing the minds of women.” What advice would you have for any young girl or woman with dreams that seem out of reach?
They're not out of reach, and you'll be told something that isn't true. We all have dreams and desires put in our hearts for a reason, and the only way to live a fully fulfilled life, for me personally, is to know that I'm chasing my destiny, that I'm going down the path of where I was meant to go. For a long time I listened to what other people thought I should do and what other people thought I was only capable of.
The real magic starts to happen when you put the power in your hands and say, “This is what I want, how am I gonna get it?” And that you don't stop until you get it.
I think that's been something that women haven't been able to be proud of, to fight and to be tough and to have resilience. All of these things weren't necessarily something that was deemed to be particularly feminine, but for me, the most feminine thing that I can do is be a warrior, be something that younger women need to look at. It's not just men who are meant to be protectors and are meant to be strong. It's for us to protect the younger generations of dreams of little girls.
I wanna feel that they can have crazy dreams like I did 15 years ago and that they'll be supported. Every path of every female surf that came before me made it possible for me to have the dream that I had, and hopefully, my journey will make it even easier for the girls that come after me.
I think the message is that no dream is too big and that you shouldn't ever let anybody take it away from you. They almost took it away from me, but in the end, they just took part of you.
When footage of you and your brother surfing Cribbar went viral a couple of years ago, did you have any idea it would lead to pursuing a career in big wave surfing?
It was definitely a shock that it went viral, but it also showed there was a space for women in this world now and that people cared about what we were doing in the water rather than just outside of it.
But in that moment I never truly believed that it was possible to have a career in big wave surfing as a woman, but I was inspired to do it however I was going to afford it.
I think that movement for me at the Cribbar was a personal mission that, I don't have to care anymore if they're gonna champion this - I got so unattached to the need for validation from the surf industry in my five years of doing other things, that when I re-entered the surf industry I almost wanted to go under the radar for a year or so. I was like, ‘I really, really, really love this, and I really want to do it for me and for the whole best part of my life’. Going viral and all of these things had been a way that people would measure my worth, or how important I was to the rest of the world. So there was an element of that Cribbar story going viral where part of me was a bit like, “Oh, it's not mine anymore.”
It’s back to the surf industry to decipher what they think of me and how they think of me, so I was a bit nervous about that story going out because I thought, “Oh, everyone's gonna talk things about me again, and I'm not really ready for that.”
But it was a huge eye-opener to me that the industry has changed and that they now support and see that 50% of the population are women if not more. And we actually really like being in the ocean.
What’s rewarding about cold water surfing over surfing in warmer climates?
Just the amount of work it takes. I think cold water immersions and all those things have helped me massively through mental health struggles. The resilience that you gain by doing hard things, like putting on a winter wetsuit, boots, gloves and a hood, and going for a 40-minute surf, when you might not even catch a wave! Sometimes putting all the gear on and going and doing something that you think is gonna be terrible, but then it's really fun, is a good way of proving to yourself that your mind can just create such crazy catastrophes. And actually, nine times out of ten, it isn't that bad.
Apart from the fact that cold water is much less crowded, and definitely more special because you had to go through more to get a good wave on a freezing cold, crazy, hard-conditioned spot to score, it's so much more exciting because of all the factors that have to come together.
Do you have any pet peeves about cold water surfing?
No, not even. I used to, massively, but no, you just have to have a good wetsuit, a good Dryrobe®, a nice pair of those Dryrobe® boots for after, and you're sweet!
Inspired by your Don’t be a Kook podcast, we’ve gotta ask, what is your number one kook moment?
My number one kook moment is not believing I could achieve all the things that my heart knew. That's been my biggest kook moment of life, because once I stopped kooking out like that everything became so much easier. Your heart already knows what's right for you.
So yeah, like I think my biggest kook moments have been not following my heart, definitely.
What are you looking forward to for the rest of this year?
I’m looking forward to healing
my foot and lots of travel. I've worked really hard the last two years just trying to get everything together with big wave surfing and it takes a good amount of cash to pull it off. I invested all of my life savings into it two years ago, so I've just been topping that pot back up.
I’m definitely feeling a lot of freedom this year. I'm ready to go to all the places where when I was a kid I got told that I shouldn't surf because it was too dangerous for me. Now I'm just going to go on my own and do it for myself. So lots of adventures, lots of travelling, lots of growth.
And we've got retreats and things, which is another part of it that I love. Being able to give people the tools to enjoy the ocean in the safest, best ways possible and share the things that I've learned through my journey of ups and downs, helping them to change their lives too is something that I love to do in the off-season. Giving back is really, really important just like on a human basis. I need that, there’s a lot of take in what I do, so to be able to give back to the people is really, really nice.
So yeah, training hard, staying on the program, not getting too lost in the off-season, and just staying strong for next season!
Follow Laura
Instagram: @lauraloucrane
YouTube: @lauracrane7739
TikTok: @lauraloucrane
Spotify:"Don't Be a Kook" podcast
#dryrobeterritory
Published on March 28, 2025