Laura Enever keeps going from strength to strength in 2024. She recently married her best friend and long time partner Jake Smith, she continues to push the boundaries of women’s big wave surfing with standout sessions so far this year in Fiji and at Shipsterns. She’s also just released a soft top collection with Mick Fanning Softboards for when the conditions are a little more mellow.

We thought this was the perfect time to release, for free, a feature we ran on Laura in Issue 594 of our mag. Tracks editor Luke Kennedy sat down with the North Narrabeen local at the end of 2023 to discuss her childhood, Laura’s time on the CT, her introduction to big wave surfing, her world record breaking paddle wave and more.

Check out the feature below and if you’d like to purchase a hard copy of the issue, some are still available at the link here.

It’s a Tuesday morning in Sydney when Laura Enever floats through the front door of the Tracks office; spring-heeled in platform sneakers, a whip of blonde hair trailing a genuine smile.

As Laura slips into easy banter about her day, it’s hard to imagine the effervescent figure skipping down the hallway is the same person who earlier this year hauled herself over the ledge on a genuine 25-footer at a Hawaiian Outer Reef.

Laura is catching up for our Tracks podcast but has the fleeting air of one in a constant state of motion. Tonight she’s heading to Sydney’s Enmore Theatre for a film premiere. A girl’s night out in a part of town that heaves with urban energy. Tomorrow she will be on a plane to Tahiti for commentary duties; centre-stage against a backdrop of tropical mountains and hissing barrels as she probes competitors for insights on their winning performances. Self-assured and charismatic, Laura seems to have no difficulty living large and transitioning between all these different worlds.

So where did all that bulletproof confidence come from I can’t help but wonder as we hit the couch, where Laura folds comfortably into a seated Lotus.

Laura explains that by the time she was eight, her and older brother, Chris, were immersed in gymnastics; 30 hours a week of somersaults, backflips and vaults, travelling to tournaments and smashing through the challenging grading system. When Laura struggled to show the perfect, parallel-leg form required by the gymnastics judges she’d spend her nights on the couch, resting telephone books on her lap to straighten out her legs. Meanwhile, the last thing she saw before falling asleep were the gymnastics posters plastered on her wall. “I feel like it gave me a sort of fearlessness,” she insists. “By the time I was like eight we were doing, you know, massive somersaults and tumbling…”

While Laura was good she’s quick to point out she wasn’t a shade on older brother Chris (who later become her surfing coach). “Chris could have trained to be on one of the Olympic squads. He was a gun. He would win all the State Titles and every- thing and come home with like 10 medals.”

Despite their gymnastics prowess, the call of the nearby North Narrabeen lineup became too strong and both Laura and Chris eventually quit the mats to make way for more water time. However, the good- natured rivalry with Chris helped accelerate Laura’s learning curve in the surf. “We both started surfing together. We just surfed every morning and afternoon and got very competitive with each other,” explains Laura. “We did so many of the same sports. I basically wanted to do everything that he did. I did touch football as well and wanted to play rugby, but dad was like, ‘No, you’re going dancing”.”

As far as Laura’s predilection for heavy waves goes, Chris suggests the signs were there from an early age when they would compete in big surf at Surf Life Saving events. “She’s always had the full adrenaline junkie vibe. She was just a real go getter.”

When Laura and Chris started taking part in the ultra-competitive North Narrabeen Boardriders Club she signed up for the boys division. According to Chris her obvious talent wasn’t always well received. “She stopped doing them because she started beating a bunch of the boys and they would all just storm off the beach, saying this is ridiculous.”

Despite years of working on good form in gymnastics, Laura wasn’t exactly enamoured by her style on a board. “I wasn’t actually one of the very best surfers when I was younger, I was a bit awkward,” she states honestly. “I was kind of like a little grasshopper.” However, by the time Laura turned 16 she’d smoothed out the kinks in her act; setting up one of those blissful runs of competitive success that every sports person spends their career trying to recreate. Victory in the ISA World Juniors was followed by an ASP World Junior title in front of a roaring home crowd at Narrabeen and by the time she was celebrating her 18th birthday Laura had, in her own words, ‘accidentally qualified for the World Tour.’

Success had come easily, without Laura compromising her happy-go-lucky nature or experiencing the kind of intense pressure often associated with young athletes. Still, when she qualified, Laura wondered if she was ready to become a full-time professional. “I remember sort of feeling like I don’t even really know, I had a good group of friends and maybe I just want to be a normal 18-year-old.”

Whatever reservations Laura may have had, the winning streak continued into her first CT event at Snapper Rocks, where she scythed past Steph Gilmore en route to a semi-finals finish. Without breaking a sweat, 18-year-old Laura Enever was number three in the world. Then things got a little tougher. “I couldn’t make a heat for the next six comps after that,” she says matter of factly. “Then the pressure just started tumbling down. I was like, ‘Okay, this is what it feels like to be stressed’.”

Laura held her spot on tour for the next seven years, but by her own admission it was never an easy ride. “I finished 10th on tour I think six times out of my seven years on tour. And so I was very consistent at coming number 10 which is also the cut off for the bubble, so you can imagine how stressful that was every year.” Looking back, Laura admits that she loved being in an environment that pushed her surfing but perhaps lacked the ruthless streak required to be a genuine title contender. “I just didn’t feel like I was ever as competitive as the other girls were. And I just, yeah, probably got a bit distracted along the way, but just didn’t really ever feel like I ever wanted to truly be World Champion.”

While Laura’s competitive interest waned she found herself increasingly focused on riding waves of consequence. In 2016 she chased the purple, forecast blobs to Fiji and P-Pass between events. Stranded for a day on a layover en route to P-Pass she wrangled a sky-diving jump to kill the time and whet the adrenal glands. When she arrived the swell was eight-to-12 feet and a heavy-duty cast had assembled to have their piece of the cross-chopped double-ups imploding over nasty coral heads. Asher Pacey, Alex Gray, Jay Davies, Davey Cathels and Mikey Wright were all on hand as Laura paddled out as the lone girl in the lineup. Simon Williams was behind the camera and recalls being blown away by her approach. “That’s when I thought this girl’s wasted on tour. No one on the women’s tour charges like this.”

Laura’s bold escapades didn’t go unnoticed and as the CT year was winding up big wave commissioner Pete Mel tapped Laura on the shoulder and invited her to compete in the inaugural woman’s Pe’ahi Challenge at Jaws. The way Laura remembers it Pete assured her the girls would be surfing 15-foot, whistle-clean Jaws. “I typed into YouTube 15-foot glassy Jaws, and then I watched a few waves, and I was like, you know what I could do that.” The waiting period stretched for months but three weeks after receiving the invitation Laura was on a plane to Maui as a giant, early season swell aimed at the Hawaiian Islands and the event was given the green light. She had no boards (they’d been ordered but hadn’t been made in time) and only a few weeks of breath training under her belt. “I wished it was three months,” recalls Laura. “But I mean, in three weeks, I got my breath hold up to about three and a half minutes and did all these really cool, sort of underwater activities where you just simulate a wipeout.”

Luckily Greg Long leant her a board (about three feet longer and much girthier than anything she’d ridden before) and Billabong supplied an inflation vest, but no amount of equipment could stop the self-doubting dialogue in her brain. “I had the biggest sense of impostor syndrome when I went to the first safety meeting. Because yeah, I mean, a few days before, I was literally like changing my mind every hour. I was like, ‘okay, I’m gonna go’ then I was like, ‘No, you’re not going’. Ultimately, Laura told herself this was her best chance of getting a wave at Jaws because her confidence would be bolstered by the team of safety people on hand.

When the day of the contest rolled around the girls were sent out in a rising 20-foot- plus swell with vicious winds clawing at the lips and chattering the giant faces. It was certainly not the 15-feet dreamscape Pete Mel had promised. On Laura’s first wave she was fully committed, taking off under the lip on a pitching giant that offered almost no entry point. She got to her feet but was caught in the violent updraft and hovered like a fluttering leaf for a few frightening seconds before being sucked through the back. Brother Chris, was in the channel watching and despite his unrelenting confidence in his sister’s ability, he couldn’t help but be concerned. “There’s definitely times where you close your eyes a bit. That first wave at Jaws was one of the biggest waves paddled all day by a man or a woman and I was sitting next to Kerrzy and JJ and said, ‘Did she just go over the falls on a 30-footer?’ I was shaking my head going, ‘What the f*%k?’ Then the next one she got rag-dolled for like 400 metres and I was worried, but then she came back out with a smile on her face.”

On wave number two, Laura stuck a free- fall drop only to see good friend, Flick Parmateer roaring down the face a few feet inside her. Laura hit the eject button, got collected by the lip and then rolled by the next set. “The set on the head just ripped my MCL (medial cruciate ligament) in half,” she reflects. “Detonated my knee just from the sheer power of it rag dolling me.”

Still flush with adrenaline Laura had every intention of surfing the final but as she sat on the boat, the pain kicked in and the severity of her injury became apparent. “The longer I sat in the boat, the more my knees started, like just blowing up. And I was like, okay, okay, I think you’ve actually done something really bad now.”

It was perhaps an unceremonious beginning to a competitive big-wave career but, while the injury hampered Laura’s CT act, it only reaffirmed her desire to ride bigger waves. By the end of the following year she had told her major sponsors, Billabong she was ditching competition and chasing swells. When they approved, Laura threw herself at the challenge with trade- mark verve. Sessions at Shipsterns, The Right and various South Coast bommies soon followed and the upshot was Laura’s highly entertaining film ‘Undone’. The film doesn’t hide from the fact that Laura took more than her fair share of licks in her quest to become a bona fide big-wave act. “She’s made of titanium or some- thing,” insists Chris. “The amount of floggings she’s had it’d be enough to make any normal sane person hang up the boots. But, you know, she kept persevering.”

In addition to showcasing Laura’s surfing ‘Undone’ deals honestly with the inherent challenges of being a big-wave surfer. “All these things, you know that could happen will happen,” chuckles Laura. “You could be in the middle of the desert. And one of the tyres goes up in flames and then you have to get the Jet Ski towed for like $3,000 for hundreds of kilometres.” When this happens, we see how Laura’s impromptu flair for the camera helps turn a soul-crushing mishap into a moment of humorous relief.

‘Undone’ culminates with a return to Jaws, where Laura successfully paddles into and rides a couple of bombs; the perfect elixir for the bad memories associated with her ill-fated contest appearance at the same wave. “I think that’s where I felt the most empowered,” explains Laura. “When I finally got that wave at Jaws again. And I realised that I paddled into this wave, and no one even called me to go, I just identified the wave got myself in the spot and then got myself down the face. And like those feelings of being able to do that is, yeah, where I definitely felt like the most proud of myself.”

Quizzed further about the appeal of riding big waves, Laura insists that she’s hooked on the state of mind she finds herself in when surrounded by all that ocean energy.

“When I was in a heat it was so hard for me to stay extremely focused for a whole 30 minutes. But when I go out when it’s really big, it’s like you’re on that whole time… It’s like the most like calm and focused version of myself that I’ve ever been able to know, which is the attraction, right? You literally don’t think about anything else in the world. You’re so present in the moment… it’s like, I just love it so much… even if you just get a wipeout in one of the sessions, it’s like the adrenaline rush is insane. You know, like feeling that power of the ocean. And then obviously getting a wave is just like an even better adrenaline rush.”

As Chris explains, the carefree, fun-loving Laura you see on land becomes a different person in big seas. “When you actually kind of really see her in that element, she’s completely different. You know, she’s so focused, she’s got her eye in, and she understands the ocean really well… she’s just willing to put herself in positions that most normal people don’t want to, and you only really see that when you’re in the lineup with her.”

While Laura does a good job of articulating the endorphin-popping, psychological appeal of riding big waves, sometimes people just want to know you rode the biggest wave. That chance arrived in the form of a cloud-tickling North Shore outer reef session on the same day The Eddie Aikau Invitational ran in January 2023. After scouting a few spots that morning Laura and Flick Parmateer were tipped off about a formidable wave that was working. When they arrived the distant lineup was shrouded in mist and six boards – most of them broken – washed up as the two friends stood on shore contemplating a go out. Then a shell-shocked surfer stumbled in, talking with wide-eyed fright about the biggest wave he’d ever seen in his life landing on his head.

When they reached the lineup, Laura recalls big-wave aficionado Jojo Roper, who was on a ski in the channel, offered some sage advice. “He said ‘If you keep watching it, you just won’t want to go out’. And he’s like, just go over there and just see how you go.”

The first thing Laura recalls seeing was someone jump from the lip of a top-to- bottom 25-footer. The waves were not just huge, but the gradient looked as steep as giant Pipe. “I was like well, okay, it’s like also a barreling slab,” explains Laura. “And it looks like you have to do like the most technical drop in the world to like, get in there.”

Eventually, Laura identified that some of the sets swinging wider offered a slightly easier entry point, so she took her position in the lineup and waited. Sure enough the Pacific sent a test her way. “There was no one telling me to go no one was like really saying anything,” recalls Laura. I just don’t know what came over me, but when it came I was like, “I’m just gonna put my head down and paddle. I remember paddling my heart out. I just felt it picked me up and then I knew it was big and I took off and looked down. I was like ‘wow’, this is the biggest wave you’ve ever been on like this is this is wild. And I started like grabbing my rail and taking the drop, and the drop just felt like forever.”

Laura knifed a rail long enough to make it to the wave’s base and initiate a bottom turn before the cascading lip proved too fierce an obstacle to drift around. The ensuing wipeout sent her deep and tossed her up close to shore, where she watched the rest of the pack get washed in by the 30-foot set that had broken behind the wave she rode. Privately content with her one massive wave, she came in. Walking up the beach a few of the surfers heading out asked her if she got any waves. Laura was convinced no one had seen the wave and didn’t want to overplay it but answered honestly. “I got the biggest wave I’ve ever caught in my life, but I really don’t know how big it was.”

It wasn’t ’til a week and a half later that documentation emerged. “Dan Russo sent me a photo. And then I found a video of it,” recalls Laura. The wave soon became the talking point of the surfing world. Suddenly people were tapping her on the shoulder and sending messages, while social media went into algorithmic fits. Until then it was just a vivid memory in Laura’s mind and a story to tell without anything to back it up – the proverbial tree falling in the forest. However, almost immediately it was being discussed as possibly the biggest wave ever paddled by a woman. Asked for his view on the ride, brother Chris suggests that while Laura is fully prepared and committed she never would have paddled out thinking specifically about catching a record-setting wave. “It’s classic Laura out in the surf, you know, just having a crack and having a dig. And then next thing you know, she ends up standing up on one of the biggest waves ever paddled by a woman.”

Meanwhile, Laura is quick to play down the conquest. “Anyway, it’s like a total accident. And if it did so happen to be that I caught the biggest paddle-wave by a woman it’d be very cool, but yeah, it feels pretty weird actually.”

Beyond conquering outer-reefs in Hawaii and chasing swells around the globe, Laura has also carved out a post-CT career as a WSL commentator. It’s a role that in many ways carries more pressure than being a competitor. Keyboard slappers and fans are often quick to pass judgement on the voices of pro-surfing, and it would be easy to feel your performance is being scrutinised as closely as the surfers on tour. However, the perpetually plucky Laura seems to take it all in her bouncy stride, resonating confidence when offering opinions on former peers or fronting the camera for WSL spin-offs like her tour Vlog. “I have to really concentrate on not swearing on the webcast, like not saying f$%k,” she says with a chuckle. “But I love telling the women’s stories on tour.”

Like all sponsored surfers Laura is under a certain amount of pressure to maintain a visible presence. It’s a competitive land- scape, but one that offers scope for creativity. Laura hints that in her next career phase she would like to join the likes of Jamie O’Brien and Nathan Florence and get her own YouTube series rolling. “I think the cool thing about life is that you can constantly evolve and recreate your self,” she offers philosophically. It’s worth mentioning that Laura killed the boredom in COVID by teaching herself a few tunes life’.. on the trumpet. “I can play Uptown Funk,” she assures me. There was also a surprising fringe benefit to her bugle playing. “I actually noticed when I did my trumpet lessons and I’d go and do underwater breath holds it was so much better.”

In an era where many feel ruled by fear of failure or the whims of social media metrics, it seems Laura Enever gives us license to take a few risks. “The only thing we can do is just give it a try and do what feels right and trust your instincts. Really trust your gut,” she offers sagely. Whether hurling herself over the ledge on 30-foot waves or throwing herself unscripted in front of a camera, it’s apparent Laura regularly puts herself out there; blasts through the comfort zones and embraces the vulnerability and growth that comes from new experiences and situations. As a writhing Iggy Pop once roared she’s got ‘a lust for life’.