It's about time! The head honchos at the world-famous Titans of Mavericks surf competition will allow women to compete for the first time in the event's 17 years. The six talented lady surfers selected to compete in the first ever Women's Heat will be announced November 1st, which is also the first day Mavericks may (or may not) open.
See, that's the thing about Mavericks. The competition is entirely contingent upon weather and wave conditions. Titans of Mavericks began in 1999 and has only seen nine competitions. The famous Mavericks waves located half-a-mile off Pillar Point near Half Moon Bay are notoriously tricky—and make for some amazing surfing. If the conditions during the competition window are unsafe, Mavericks skips another year.
Mavericks was last held in February of 2016 and it was awesome.
This year's window is from November 1, 2016 to March 31, 2017, and the list of 24 male international surf stars has already been announced to great fanfare. Once the folks at Mavericks decide the competition is a go, those 24 surfer men and 6 pioneering surfer women will have no more than 48 hours to get themselves to Half Moon Bay.
Women often surf Mavericks' unofficial waves. It's only thanks to the efforts of a handful of big wave surfers that the competition has finally broken the glass ceiling. Calling themselves "the Committee for Equity in Womens' Surfing", the surfers have been petitioning the organizers to include women as recently as last month, but weren't expecting results so quickly.
"I’m stoked," world-class surf star Keala Kennelly told Surfer Magazine. "I think this is a big win for women’s surfing, women’s sports, and women in general."
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