the season. This year, the 21-year-old Aussie with the toothy smile tells us that she’s ready to graduate from the runner-up position. With the first five rounds of the Roxy Pro Gold Coast completed, Sally gives us the run-down on what’s happened, what’s on the agenda, and how her dream for the ASP Women’s Tour involves hot male escorts.
Congrats on making it to the Semis. Can you just quickly walk us through the first few days of the event?
There’s so much support for me at this event, it’s been crazy. Roxy made all these “Go Sally” signs and put them everywhere, and people have beach balls and T-shirts with my name on it. I looked in from the water and it’s written up on the side of the hotel. It’s crazy. We ran the first four days of the waiting period, which was cool because we could kind of gained some momentum. There were some pretty good match-ups as well. We had a bit of an upset with Tyler [Wright] taking out Carissa [in the Quarters], but the event has had some good match-ups and it’s cool to see some of the rookies in there. This event is always a good benchmark, and everyone’s looking pretty fiery and ready to go for the season.
I know you’ve been training and really focusing during the six-month off-season. What have you done differently this year to prepare?
This year we obviously had a long break, so I was definitely training really hard, but unfortunately I busted my wrist in Fiji in December so I had a month out of the water over Christmas and January. I used that time to analyze my surfing and tried to change a few things with my style, just from watching all the footage. It was pretty special to be able to jump back in the water a week before the Australian Open—even though the surf was small—so I could get back in the mindset of competition. I was pretty stressed the week before because I hadn’t been in the water, but I relaxed and came up with a win. I was pumped with that.
So it’s an all-Aussie Semis at this event, do you think that was due to the conditions or just luck?
I don’t know, it was a really strong showing for the Aussies in this event overall. It reminds me of the Junior days with all of us growing up. We’ve all surfed Snapper since we were 10 years old, and we’ve surfed it onshore, offshore, all the different conditions. It’s been tricky there the last few days, pretty bumpy, and if you don’t pick the right spot you can get really lost on the wave. All the Aussie girls seemed to interpret it right, and chose the right waves as well. Hopefully this will be a good year for the Aussies. This is a good sign—hopefully we’ll be able to bring that ASP World Title back to Australian shores this year.
For the full interview with Sally Fitzgibbons log on to SURFER Magazine.
