Maya Gabeira: Fighting for a world record | Forward Progress

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1:02This week, Maya Gebera.

1:08You set what you thought was a world record, turned out to be. But take me from that moment to the WSL Awards and then what you realized at that point. Yeah, so I rode my biggest wave until that point in 18th of January, 18. I truly felt like, okay, this was the biggest wave of my life. I think this is a wave that could put me in the world record, I mean, this is something worth fighting for. And the category was unisex at the time. And so January, I started talking to the WSL. Look, this is a wave that should be considered. Let's talk again about doing the separation of the women and men. And I thought I was going somewhere, but they were not very specific about what they were doing behind the scene.

2:10And I went to the awards in April in California, and they never showed my wave. I was like, where's my wave? Like, what the fuck am I doing here? And then the bigger fight starts to talk and talk and talk with the WCL, understand what had happened. I think around three or four months later, I realized that it was going nowhere. And that's when I had the idea of doing something public. and that would be the petition, and I needed some support, exposure. So you do the petition, and what ends up happening from there? Well, I decided to do the petition. With that, I also decided to retire, because who is going to petition against their own sport league and not retire, right?

3:05I mean, I'm going to go out and I'm going to say, all those things about them and say how incapable they are and how they have prejudice or whatever and like what I'm going to go back and like they might never like respond an email again you know I might be banned like that was a real possibility in my mind you know I'm going to fight against them publicly like I might be banned it was more than 20 ,000 signatures on the petition and and even And right when the petition went live, they contacted me. It was very quick. It was same day. Same day. It's all happening. It's all happening. Please take it out of the website.

3:45And I was like, look, I cannot. This can only be taken out of the website when I have my word record in my hand. So I left it going until it was official and I was given the the word record, and then we closed the petition. What was your reaction when you found out it happened? Oh, my God, I cried at my dog. Jesse from the WSL, I think, texted me or called me and said, Go, it's happening. I hung up, and I was like, Oh, my God. And you know why? Because it was so stressful. You know, like, it was not nice. You know, it was not nice to be begging for something that I thought I deserved. It made me sad, broke my heart, and, you know, I lost hair over it.

4:40Really? Yeah. I had blocks of hair fall out of my head. So I could tell, like, the stress was getting to me. You know, it was just not... I was still dealing with the anxiety disorder intensively. So, yeah, it was too much. The record-setting wave, you know, biggest wave surfed in 2020. You had said you've never been so close to such a powerful explosion. Explain that. The noise that that wave made when it broke right behind me was the scariest thing I've ever heard. And I felt humbled. I felt like for a second I didn't really want to be there. Not thinking about consequences, Maya. It's like one of those moments where you realize you risked it again, and you just put yourself out there, and you know, you might get lucky or you might get not.

5:42And there's this like fine line. You want to be close to the fire, but you don't want to catch on fire. There was this sensation between me, Seb, and our team that, like, if I had really taken that wave on the head, the way I was, where I was, would have been very complicated. What did you think of the public reaction to your second world record? The second world record had great, great, great reaction. I feel like there was a solid story there to tell. At that point, you know, there was a near drowning. There was a first world record that was fought for. And then there was a second world record.

6:28And, you know, I feel like the story became complete. Explain the new set of measuring criteria that was used for that and why. Yeah, that was another fight too. I have a fierce competitor who's French, Justine. And she had an amazing ride that same year. And we were both wanting the world record. And I was scared under their judging panel and their criterias that I was going to get badly judged. Because the main sponsor had fired me. There was history there. There was a lot of history. And so I started getting worried, not about losing, but I started getting worried about how can I pressure them to create something that has a logic.

7:26And so that's when I started pushing inside the league that I wasn't going to accept a record either way, if it was mine or not, not to be explained and have a reasonable science or theory even behind the measurement tool. Because to date, that's never been what they've done. No, never. They've just given it out. Looked at pictures to judge. Exactly. And that's why we had, we ended up with a 17-page report of the scientists that created the Kelly Slater wave, explaining why I became the winner over Justine's wave. Both your close friend Stephanie, who's doing a documentary on you, and your toe partner Sebastian said, if you were to surf the highest wave ever surfed by a man or a woman, because of politics in the sport, they don't believe it would ever be awarded to a woman, let alone you.

8:35I think anything is possible. I have surprised myself with my political moves before. I'm a great strategist. No, I don't know. I don't think it's going to happen because I don't think that's something that's on my to-do list as a priority. But I think if it did happen, I would surely fight for it. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week and every week sharing long-form interviews on Mondays and shorter uplifting stories on Thursdays and then trending clips on Fridays. We'd love to hear from you with ratings and reviews. Do you prefer the longer podcast episodes or our shorter ones? I'm excited to get your take.

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