ASP

1610, 2009

North Shore Surfer Girl Coco Ho Wins WQS and First WCT Event!

By |October 16th, 2009|North Shore Surfer Girl Coco Ho Wins WQS, Surf Happenings|1 Comment

North Shore Surfer Girl Coco Ho has just won the Association of Surfing Professionals, ASP 2009 World Qualifying Tour at the final event in Brazil. 2009 is her first full year on the ASP World Tour and she’s still in the running to win the ASP World Championship Tour which will wrap up on the North Shore of Oahu in December.

Coco who is sponsored by Volcom, Nike 6.0 and Warrior Wetsuits had this to say upon learning that she had won the WQS; “I have been focusing on the World Tour this year, and I’m having a good year there, so winning the WQS is such a great bonus for me.”

Coco was born and raised on the North Shore of Oahu. She’s an a friendly and articulate young lady who has been surfing real North Shore waves since she was a little girl. Her father is surfing legend Michael Ho and her uncle is World Champion surfer Derek Ho.  She played a young Ann Marie in the Movie Blue Crush and is one of the finest female surfers the North Shore has ever raised.

P.S. Coco won her first WCT event in Portugal on October 30th, 2009. NSSG will be […]

1010, 2009

Will Women Surfers Ever Achieve Equality?

By |October 10th, 2009|Musings, Surf Happenings, Will Women Surfers Ever Acheive Equality?|0 Comments

Normally, I try to refrain from commenting on “political” issues relating to surfing, but upon learning that officials in the State of Hawaii have denied the permit for the only and 21st annual women’s contest at Pipeline and upon reading a recent press release detailing the reorganization of the official World Surfing Tour from the Association of Surfing Professionals, ASP I had to comment.

What particularly caught my attention in the ASP press release was the increase in prize money for the men from $3.4 million to $4 million and for the women from US$630,000 to a “generous” $800,000 and the addition of a women’s representative to the governing board. The irony is that the men’s prize money increase is almost as much as the prize purse for women’s entire tour and yet we all know in our hearts that the women’s surfing clothing industry is huge, huge, huge, and that companies like Roxy sells more clothing then Quicksilver.  Why is there such a huge disparity in surfing prize purses?  That goes back to the lack of even a single women on the ASP board of directors until now. However, with one vote on a board of 7 people […]