This uncredited AP article ran in the November 22, 1971, edition of the Miami Herald. Blears was the first alternate for that year's Smirnoff Pro, in Hawaii, but didn't get a start in the event.

Laura Blears is 20 years old, loves to sew, putter around her garden and make things out of seashells for her home. She’s also the first woman ever to try to enter the tough male world of surfing. She’s entered the Smirnoff World Pro-Am Championships opening on Oahu’s North Shore this Saturday.

Laura will be riding towering waves while competing against 41 men, including such greats as Peru's Felipe Pomar, for a prize purse of $6,000. Is yet another bastion of male supremacy crumbling? Well, Laura surely will stand out among the contestants. but it won't be any great blow for women’s lib. She’s never heard of Bella Abzug, and, like the song says, she enjoys being a girl.

“I know I'm supposed to be all for women's lib, but I’m not,” she said in an interview. "I like the deal where the woman is at home and takes care of the family. I don’t dig women baseball catchers, football players, and truck drivers. Those are jobs for men.”

But surfing, the five-foot five-inch, 135-pound brunette insists, is somehow different "In surfing, you don’t have to have any kind of separation.” she savs. "It’s for both sexes. It's something that’s so free, you can do your own thing."

Laura has been doing her surfing thing since "just when I could walk.” Her brother Jim, against whom she'll be competing in the Smirnoff, placed third in the contest last year.

They are the children of Lord James Blears, a wrestling personality, who once drew the largest wrestling crowd ever against the late Gorgeous George at the Los Angeles Olympic Auditorium. They attracted 10,800 persons.

Laura has an impressive list of accomplishments behind her. In five years of competitive surfing, she's won women’s amateur titles in the Smirnoff event and other local contests. She was rated the No. 1 woman surfer in 1970-71 by the Hawaii Surfing Association.

Can she win the Smirnoff? "I figure I’ve got a chance if the waves are 10 to 12 feet. That's what I’m used to. At 12 feet, I kind of get of scared. Or I might get lucky. Everybody in my heat might get wiped out.”

Her strategy? "I'm going to try to make everything look smooth. I'm going to drop down to the bottom of the wave and come up inside the curl. I'm going to stay right in that curl.”

Laura even concedes that men might inherently be better surfers "because they’re so cool-headed and everything. Girls are too panicky and not as powerful as guys."

Even if she doesn’t win any prize money, Laura says it won’t be the end of the world. She's looking forward to entering the University of Hawaii next semester.

She hasn't decided on a major. But it won’t be mechanical engineering.

"LAURA BLEARS RIDING A BIG WAVE IN SURFING, NOT WOMEN'S LIB" (1971)

Subscribe or Login

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Features

The Sunday Joint

Videos

Contests