After the waves pulled a no show at last week’s Roxy Pro Biarritz we caught up with Aussie surfer Laura Enever to chat Kelly Slater, falling in love with surfing again and ‘that’ trailer

Interview by Sam Haddad

Hey Laura, how was Biarritz? Were you doing a wave dance to make sure the contest went ahead!?
I’m always dancing haha. We were doing some little wave dances but it didn’t help unfortunately [the Roxy Pro contest was cancelled due to a lack of waves last week].

What did you do to pass the time?
We were in such an amazing place and there was a lot to do… but I think all the girls were just wishing and hoping that waves would come.

Who do you hang out most with on tour?
Most of the time I hang out with Sage [Erickson], Coco Ho, Stephanie [Gilmore] and my brother he’s on the tour as well and right now I have some friends travelling through Europe that are staying with us two so it’s being loads of fun.

And who do you think has the best chance of winning this year?
I would love to see Carissa [Moore] win again, she’s a good friend of mine, we’ve known each other for 10 years so I would love to see her do well and Courtney [Conlogue] as well she’s doing really good. I guess it’s going to be tight.

We enjoyed your I’m Laura webisode series, how did that come about?
I used to make these little YouTube videos, there were real stupid but they got a lot of views and it seemed that everybody wanted me to keep making some thing so I had this idea that I wanted to do a web series and then I met my filmmaker and he was so creative and right too. We’ve just been travelling around this year. It’s been fun.

What about Kelly Slater’s comments on your bottom turn! Did you find them sexist/funny or both?
Haha I thought it was hilarious. I think it was kind of a compliment and it was nice that he noticed hahahahahaha.

You say in the film “winning isn’t everything” is that a new thought having realised how tough it is on the tour or a level-headed approach you’ve always had to life?
Ever since I was young I’ve competed because I loved it, and I think at the end of last year I stopped loving competing. I didn’t like the way that I was feeling inside when I was surfing so I wanted to try to bring the love of competing out again this year. Everything that you’re feeling comes out when you’re competing so I just wanted to have a good year and I’m already having so much more fun and I just want to make competing fun again for me, because it used to be fun when I was younger and I didn’t want that to change. At the end of the day I really don’t think winning is everything, I mean of course I want to win and every contest I try my best to win but there’s no point in beating yourself up because we have such an amazing life travelling around and I want to make the most of it.

Episode 2 of the webisode series is due out mid-August, what can we expect to see in that?
Episode 2 is actually… I mean this year it’s been a roller-coaster and we’ve captured it all on footage… and like I said it’s just very honest and in the second episode I’m pretty much going through a tough time where I haven’t been competing well and I’m still not loving competing because I’ve got some bad results at the start of the year and I think it’s just learning about myself, and self-trust and self-discovery and just loving the little things in life again.

We documented your love of Leo the other week haha, any other loves in your life?
Haha no it’s just Leo in my life.

The Leo piece made us laugh, do you have any jokes you can tell us or funny stories of stuff you’ve been up to?
There are a lot of fun stories. I don’t even know where to start… I think you should wait for the I’m Laura episode as we’ll have a lot of funny things coming on…

What were your thoughts on the Roxy Pro trailer? Do you think it should have had some surfing in it or was it just showing another side to the sport?
I think the way that everyone markets themselves outside of competing is up to them, I mean everybody can go do photoshoots here and there and just do what they like. But I think it’s best to keep it separate from actual competing. I don’t know, I just feel there should be a line. But I mean Stephanie [Gilmore] is amazing, she’s such an amazing surfer, she’s beautiful. I guess they wanted to bring attention to the contest and they’ve had the most views ever for a surf contest trailer so I guess they got that done. At the end of the day I don’t want a 12-year-old girl to look up to women surfers and think they have to be sexy if they ever want to make it in surfing, so I think it’s just good to know that at the end of the day surfing on the wave is what actually matters for the contest. You can be the sexiest surfer in the world but you’re not going to win a heat because of that.

Laura is sponsored by Billabong

You can read the last Pro Chat interview we did with her in 2011 here