Grant Baker and Keala Kennelly on their way to becoming your newest world champions. Images: WSL
The big wave world tour has crowned its champions, and they are Keala Kennelly and Grant Baker. This year, events only ran in Portugal and Maui for the Nazare Challenge and the Jaws Challenge, respectively.
Kennelly’s win is years in the making. Since conditions didn’t line up well enough to run the Mavericks Challenge, the single win at Peahi earned her the title, but it didn’t come easy.
“Holy shit,” she told The Inertia at the time. “That was a heavy day.”
The Jaws event was an inconic one, if only for the difficult conditions that bordered on unsurfable. “I have very mixed feelings about winning a contest where I don’t make a wave or score over a three,” Kennelly continued. “I didn’t make a wave today. I didn’t kick out of a wave onto the shoulder like ‘Yay, a complete ride!’ I mostly just got my ass handed to me and I didn’t score over a three, but somehow I won.”
Kennelly’s influence on the sport has become even more apparent in recent years. “Her name is one of four that comprises the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing (CEWS),” wrote Juan Hernandez. “Maybe the single greatest influence on the WSL’s new equal pay policy that might also become state law in California. Before that, she was in on the ground level when the push started for the women to have their own big wave competitions and, funny enough, probably the toughest person for naysayers to shut down after she made history, winning a big wave award in a field full of men.”
Grant “Twiggy” Baker’s world title comes after a win at the Nazare Challenge (in some of the craziest conditions in a big wave event) and a fifth-place finish in Maui at the Jaws Challenge. He’s been a staple on the big wave scene since he stepped onto it. Back in 2003, he made the finals at the first big wave event he entered, the Red Bull Big Wave Africa at Dungeons.
It’s his third Big Wave World Title, but that doesn’t make it any less meaningful to him. “To be the Big Wave Tour Champion means the world to me,” Baker said. “I put in a lot of time and effort and it is amazing that it has paid off.”
