“Not a Subset of Shortboarding:” Rebuilding the World Longboard Tour
Rachael takes the win at the 2022 Vans Duct Tape paddle race. © WSL / Morris
HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA — It’s no secret that the World Longboard Tour has struggled in recent years, with a dwindling events schedule, public conflict, and uncertainty about what’s to come. But the tides are beginning to turn. We sat down with world champion Rachael Tilly and legendary surfing commentator Shannon Hughes to discuss their vision for the future of longboarding. As two of the most passionate loggers you’ll ever encounter, Rachael and Shannon are committed to growing the sport. Their love for the discipline shines through in everything they do, from their innovative women’s surfing podcast to their professional roles. And when it comes to building a sustainable longboard tour, they’re not afraid to voice their hopes and dreams.
Photo via Instagram / @the.double.up
Advancing Conversations Around Women’s Surfing
“We have a voice, and we can use that.”
SHANNON: There has historically been a lack of conversation around women’s surfing. It’s changed a lot today, but there are still so many areas where women just don’t get exposure in media. We’re not going to be creating a magazine—that’s up to much more talented people, like yourself—but we both have a voice and we can use that. So we created The Double-Up Podcast to “double up” on the conversation between shortboarding and longboarding and [offer] a platform for more people to be aware of what’s happening in those worlds, specifically around women’s surfing.
Every week we do a news podcast, covering anything in the world of longboarding, shortboarding, freesurfing, or edits that have dropped. And every couple of weeks, we’ll throw in a critical conversation where we get to dive into a topic that we’re really passionate about. Maybe it’s something about women’s equality in surfing, or the judging criteria: let’s educate the world on what longboarding looks like now, because a lot of people don’t know.
There’s so much that’s happening in the men’s news cycle, and we get updates on “this guy just did the biggest air that’s ever been done,” whatever the things are. Women’s stuff just doesn’t get tapped into. So our purpose is to create more conversation around women’s surfing.
Longboarding’s Legacy
“I would love to see our industry move towards celebrating all types of surfing.”
SHANNON: Longboarding connects us to the roots of surfing. Surfing started on big planks of wood, and pretty much everybody learns to surf on a longboard when they’re growing up. It’s something I connected with from a young age.
My dad was a passionate longboarder. He always wanted us to ride longboards as kids, because he felt like the more waves we caught, the more fun we’d have and the longer we’d want to surf: not just in the sense of paddling out for two hours versus a half hour, but in our life. He thought if we liked longboarding, we would love surfing until our 60s or 70s or 80s. For me, longboarding has just always been the thing. I never really clicked on a shortboard. I don’t know how to paddle anything that sinks!
Female longboarding, specifically, is all-encompassing. From the world tour perspective, it’s almost like the criteria has been written for women: style, flow, and grace. That ballet approach—that dance, that fluidity—comes through really naturally for women.
RACHAEL: I grew up doing both shortboard and longboard, as a kid does. Longboarding is the one that I always gravitated towards. I had a natural connection to it. I enjoy my sessions more when I’m on a longboard; whenever I’m on my shortboard, I’m thinking, “look at that noseride section!” So it’s something that has deeply resonated with me and will likely be part of my life forever. Because of that, I’m so passionate about the way longboarding is perceived and exists within our sport culture.
Shortboarding has always been the “premier product” [within the surfing industry]. I think there’s a whole demographic of people that are missing out on getting to enjoy beautiful surfing that’s different, and I would love to see our industry move towards celebrating all types of surfing. Looking towards the future, hopefully we continue to see energy poured into longboarding, whether that’s competition or brands investing in longboard athletes and making it a sustainable world to be in.
The Viability of Pro Longboarding
“Historically, for the world’s best longboarders, being the world’s best longboarder is their part-time job.”
RACHAEL: I think the right attention hasn’t been served to longboarding in the past 15 years. Part of that was due to the [judging] criteria, which turned very high performance. That caused longboarding’s credibility to disintegrate a bit. It’s taken us a while to move away from that.
[Longboarding] became a subset of shortboarding, and when that perception came in the industry wasn’t as excited to back it. ASP didn’t want to run as many events, and it all kind of fizzled out. So we really are starting over. We have three events this year and four next year, so the resurgence is happening. And everyone’s now viewing it as its own respected discipline rather than a subpar of the premier.
It is a totally different side of the industry. I think there’s a perception that longboarding is trying to do do exactly what shortboarding has done, but we’re just trying to break our own ceilings and [allow athletes] to explore and reach their full potential.
Historically, for the world’s best longboarders, being the world’s best longboarder is their part-time job. It’s amazing what all the competitors that I’ve grown up looking up to have been able to achieve while still going back to work on Monday. I think we’re starting to see that push towards a sustainable tour, with young girls starting to get sponsorship backing and thinking, this can be my career. When that exists then more people can watch and enjoy, and the cycle continues.
“Longboard hasn’t really had that sport culture associated with it very much, which I really appreciate—but at the same time, longboarders are just as competitive.”
SHANNON: I think there’s this concept of what’s cool and what’s not—which is funny, because most of the really cool guys with great style ride longboards and lots of different kinds of craft.
At some stage people starting riding shortboards, and they thought maybe it’s more difficult because it’s harder to paddle, harder to catch waves. They’re doing more progressive maneuvers, they’re trying to do airs, they’re doing really extreme turns. So maybe it just got taken into consideration that it was more difficult to do than longboarding. I personally don’t believe that. I think the technical difficulty of having an actual pocket hang ten is just as difficult as getting yourself deep in a barrel. It’s having knowledge of the wave, and it’s knowing how to utilize your equipment.
Longboarding just got pushed to the backseat at some point, and shortboarding took over. Shortboarding is something people view to be a little more athletic as well, so there’s kind of this sport movement behind it. Longboard hasn’t really had that sport culture associated with it very much, which I really appreciate—but at the same time, longboarders are just as competitive.
© WSL / Morris
Kelis Kaleopa’a, 2022 Vans Duct Tape Champion. © WSL / Ryder
Moving Past Conflict in the Longboarding Community
“We’re all just trying to push the sport forward and make something sustainable—in our generation and for future generations.”
RACHAEL: He’s a controversial person, but Joel [Tudor] going out after his world titles and saying, no, I’m going to do the Duct Tape, I want to celebrate traditional surfing—that made people turn their heads and go, oh, that’s what longboarding’s about. And now the criteria’s different, celebrating longboarding and making it its own sport and discipline.
That original post came across like it was unequal prize money. It created a lot of confusion. Obviously we have equal prize money, and we’re the only tour that has an equal number of men and women, which I think is an amazing feat for us. I’d love eventually to see that on the shortboard side, too, because I think the talent is there.
In that controversy, what I think [Joel] was getting at was the message of equal opportunity for longboarders, and that comes in the number of events and getting prize money for us to travel and do this as a job. It seems like all the surfers and the WSL are aligned now in what [the League] has been able to do this year and what we’re looking forward to next year. We’re all just trying to push the sport forward and make something sustainable—in our generation, that would be amazing, and for future generations.
The Future of the World Longboard Tour
“She has a heart for where longboarding is at the moment, and I think we can trust her with sharing our vision.”
RACHAEL: I want to see longboard grow. I’m so invested in that, and it’s great now to see other people who are as invested in longboarding, who come from a longboarding background and know it through and through, to be at the head of it. I think that is so crucial, and it’s an amazing move by the WSL to put Kirra and Tory at the helm. I think that’s gonna help bring the sport into what’s representative of what everyone wants.
I’d love to see a tour with five or six events, which we’re pretty much close to, and to have a really developed qualification pathyway onto the tour. While we’ve been battling to have a solid number of events on the championship tour, the qualification pathyway has also been hurting. To have that really developed would allow new talent to come up and be vying for those spots on the Championship Tour. We also need to have them in waves that suit our criteria. We need a diversity of waves: lefts, rights, peaks. My dream would be the point at J-Bay. It used to be on the longboard tour back in the 2010s, and it’s in my opinion the best wave in the world.
SHANNON: I think it’s really great that they’ve got two women taking the helm. Kirra Seale is a high-level competitor, so for her to decide to walk into retirement and take on this kind of role is quite honorable. She’s got a good vision for where the sport can go. She has a heart for where longboarding is at the moment, and I think we can trust her with sharing that vision with the WSL which hasn’t always—actually, has never been on the same page. Tory Gilkerson is a world champion coming from a judging perspective. She’s worked her way up to the CT and then to the Olympics. She’s such a talented judge with so much credibility, and she really knows her role in that scene.
I think [my dream Longboard Tour] would look similar to the pathway shortboarding has right now, with the regional Qualifying Series to Challenger Series to Championship Tour format. The number one thing they need to focus on is getting the world’s best waves for longboarding, and creating a tour that has local qualifiers to open up a field where we can have surfers from all over the world enter into a bigger pack. Maybe 40, 50, 60 surfers in the draw, and best of that gets a spot in the world tour, and then develop it to regional level to celebrate what’s happening everywhere.
Rachael finding her flow. © WSL / Morris
Finding Inspiration in Fellow Female Athletes
“You look at someone who’s won so much, and realize that losses can still sting. I have found that a really inspirational message.”
RACHAEL: This might be cliché, but an athlete that inspires me a lot right now is Carissa Moore. This year, coming off her fifth world title win and wearing the yellow jersey pretty much every event, she’s been really transparent on social media about some of her struggles and how hard some of the losses have felt. You look at someone who’s won so much and realize that losses can still sting. And I just appreciate her sharing how she navigates through that struggle with confidence when she’s paddling out into a heat.
We sometimes have this false perception of people who win that’s like, well, clearly they don’t get nervous, clearly it’s easy for them, and they’re just naturally talented so they don’t have to work at it. I really appreciate how Carissa has been opening up that insight into what is going on in her brain as a reigning world champion. I have found that a really inspirational message. If Carissa Moore has days like that, it’s more than okay for me to feel that way sometimes, too.
SHANNON: Caity Simmers is taking her own approach to the whole surf thing. I really respect her decision to turn down the CT spot last year. Walking through the open doors in her own time, which is not something most people figure out till much later in life. She rips and is proving this year that she can qualify any time she wants. A unique place to hold in the surfing world, and she’s doing it with style and a phenomenally mature attitude.
