Wonder Woman of the Week: Maya Gabeira
Our Wonder Woman this week is an athlete who pushed the limits of her body and mind to dangerous limits in the pursuit of women across the globe. Maya Gabeira is a big wave surfer from Brazil who didn't start surfing until she was a teenager. That didn't stop the grom from immediately entering competitions in Brazil where- at only seventeen years-old- she already started competing in professional events. Gabeira wasn't content riding the smaller waves of longboard and qualifier series events though. Early on in her career, Gabeira made a name for herself as a big wave surfer- surfing some of the largest waves in the world. Between 2007 and 2010, Gabeira won the Billabong award for best female big wave surfer four years in a row, and- in 2008- she became the first known woman to surf the Gulf of Alaska, California's Ghost Trees, and French Polynesia's Teahupoo.
During a 2013 surf contest at the infamously dangerous Nazare in Portugal, Maya Gabeira lost consciousness under a wave, and rescue workers had to resuscitate her after getting her body back to the beach. After hospitalization and recovery however, Gabeira returned to the ocean to keep challenging her limits. In 2018, Gaberia set a world record for the tallest wave any woman has known to have surfed by surfing a sixty-eight foot wave in the same place where she almost drowned. In 2020, she broke her own record by riding a wave over seventy-three feet tall- the tallest wave ridden that year by men or women. Women in surfing at all levels are shattering the stereotypes that men ride while women stay on the beach, and Gabeira is certainly one of those athletes shattering the stereotype. As a big wave surfer who has cheated death, broken international records, and inspired countless future surfers; Gabeira is setting a new standard for a sport increasingly becoming a beacon for women's empowerment.
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