After recently winning Snapper Rocks to open the year, World Number 1 Lakey Peterson sat down with CNN Australia to talk about her surfing life. While we’ve heard Lakey’s story before (she’s one of the sport’s best athletes), the most interesting nuggets came when she started talking about the surfing’s Olympic inclusion coming up in 2020 in Japan.
Peterson’s mom was apparently an Olympic-caliber swimmer and said the sport’s inclusion will add legitimacy to surfing, a point that some purists might actually have a problem with given that snowboarding’s inclusion in the Olympics has actually created a large divide in the sport.
“I think a lot of people who I tell ‘I am a professional surfer,’ the response half the time is ‘oh that’s cool, so what are you studying in school?’ They think it’s more of a hobby,” she told the outlet. “I think it will be game-changing. I think as an athlete it is going to be really special and we will finally be recognized as athletes — which is what we are — and put us on that same level as everyone else that is in the Olympics.”
Read the full profile, here.
