Surfing: Big Break led to following in mum's wake

Northland surfer Wini Paul won the Jim Beam Big Break earlier this year. Photo / Craig Olsen

In the cut-throat world of women's professional surfing, it takes a lucky break to get the momentum to attack the world tour.

For 21-year-old Northland surfer Wini Paul that's exactly what happened when she won the Jim Beam Big Break earlier this year. Paul, a former national champion now based on the Gold Coast of Australia, won the chance to finance her dream to become a professional surfer.

The competition, based on voting on an online profile and video clip, was set up by Jim Beam to sponsor one male and one female surfer to the ASP World Qualifying Series. Paul gained over 1000 votes to win the second tier of the competition.

After attending the Raglan Surfing Academy during her school years she had a flurry of top results including the New Zealand national women's title in 2007, a win that had special appeal.

"My best result would have to be winning the national title. My mum has won it six times. So to get my name on the same trophy as her was amazing," she says. Paul's mother is Pauline Pullman, a Northland and national surfing icon and one of the matriarchs of New Zealand women's surfing.

Pullman dominated almost every event she competed in during her long career and has helped her daughter into the world of competitive surfing. "My mum is everything to me. She never pushed me into surfing; she just let it happen in my own time.

"Mum has always supported me completely and given me the best opportunities she could, and at the same time let me learn lessons for myself," she says.

Paul, who has been living in the Surf Mecca of Snapper Rocks for the last four years, living and surfing with world champions on an almost daily basis, has fine-tuned her skills and confidence for her attack on the world scene in 2011. "I watch all the local professional surfers here (on the Gold Coast) all the time. I like to see what they do on the wave and how they surf the wave and compare it to how I do and I try to improve," she says.

She has been fortunate enough to tap into the training network under the guidance of one of Australia's best. "I get most my coaching from Mark Richardson the Australian team head coach. He is a competitive genius," she says.

Richardson has driven Paul hard and she has been involved in a rigorous training and fitness programme which she hopes will provide results.

Her heroes include the likes of multiple world champion Stephanie Gilmore and fellow Australian superstar Sally Fitzgibbons.

But she is quick to add that one of her biggest inspirations has come from New Zealand's first female world tour surfer, friend and mentor Paige Hareb.

"I fully admire Paige for going against the odds and getting on the World Tour. She has put New Zealand women's surfing on the map," she says.

"I want to prove to myself that I can do it and that every little thing that has happened in my life has been worth it. My dream is to do what I love, surfing, and share the experience and knowledge with others," she says.

Paul's ASP World Qualifying Series started in Western Australia last week and will take her to France, Portugal, Spain, California and Hawaii.