‘People want to push you out the door’: Sally Fitzgibbons not ready to let new generation surfers take over

When Sally Fitzgibbons was demoted to Challenger Series, the champion surfer felt like someone else was controlling the fate of her career.

Sally Fitzgibbons carving up at the 2024 Bonsoy Gold Coast Pro. Picture: Cait Miers/World Surf League

She had her own doubts, but Sally Fitzgibbons believes rediscovering her childhood love for surfing has extended her career.

Demoted to the Challenger Series last season, Fitzgibbons mounted an exceptional year to win the overall title and break back into the Championship.

“I’m still moving towards the light,” a reflective Fitzgibbons told this masthead.

“It feels like you’re tumbling, so it’s a game of snakes and ladders, and I tend to choose that I’m still climbing.

“Competing and surfing brings me a lot of joy, and so I try to display that in all parts, even when it’s the worst situation.

“The biggest fear I had was, three years ago when it didn’t go to plan and they cut you off, my body and mind was like, ‘Oh, does that mean I can’t do it anymore? Does that mean that’s the end?’ Like, someone else has decided the end?

“And after all these years, I feel like I need to grant myself the ability to write my own ending, which pulls the power back into my own court, and rightly so, because this is personal journey.”

Fitzgibbons will celebrate her 34th birthday on Thursday (December 19), and has started to consider life beyond the waves.

“Surfing’s been my life, and it is the biggest part of my life since the age of 10 to now 34 nearly, so it is mostly what I’ve known and I’ve learnt my life lessons through it,” she said.

“But there is a time where it’s going to have to let me go to the other side.

“So I’m developing all parts of what that’s going to look like, and not trying to hold on, and just let it unfold.”

Sally Fitzgibbons celebrates winning gold at the ISA World Surfing Games. Picture: ISA / Jersson Barboza

But gearing up for a big 2025 season - with Fox Sports and Kayo expected to renew their broadcast partnership with World Surf League early next year - Fitzgibbons makes clear she is far from done with competing and has found her youthful spirit in the process of rebuilding her career.

“It almost goes backwards to the beginning, and what I found is that the more I feel like that grom, going to your South Coast Challenge events and pro junior events and just showing off, and you get no special privileges,” she said.

“It’s like backyard cricket and games with my brothers, there’s no privilege. If you don’t win the heat, you don’t win the heat.

“You need adult consequences, so it’s like almost back to playing the game and kind of forgetting the story, and you don’t get to keep anything in your past anyway.”

Fitzgibbons needed to re-establish her name in the sport as the next generation broke through and there were fears she’d be left in the dust.

“That’s what happens when there’s so few spots, it’s just the natural clean-out that’s happening because like any sports fan, you want to see the new, fresh hotshot,” Fitzgibbons said.

“But in your own story, you just write your own story, and I was having a beautiful time with the most challenging things that could come my way.

Sally Fitzgibbons is chaired off after winning the World Surf League (WSL) Lexus US Open of Surfing. Picture: Supplied

“It’s a funny thing, surfing’s so uncontrollable and unpredictable, but I found myself in that same spot at Margaret River, and it was do or die heat like three years in a row, and it was just like, ‘Wow, how am I straight back here?’

“And there’s something beautiful in it, it almost held me there long enough to really appreciate, and process that we’re all athletes, and it’s inevitable that it’s going to come to an end at some point, and the fear of that finish line, it feels real at this point in my career, and people just want to send you out the door, and it makes you question the desire and what you still have to achieve on your board.

“I feel like I still have more to give and to go back to that Challenger arena, and you get stripped of your name off your back and your number’s gone, and you’re just a number in the system, and it’s like, ‘Okay, fight for your spot’.

“At this point in my career, I love the way that’s refreshed everything.

“It just feels so new and so alive and so hard and complicated, but at the same time, really simple, because it just show I’m still truly in love with the sport, and I want to be a part of it.

“I always credit my family environment, mum and dad, I always try to find one positive thing out of a really challenging situation, and it was that I could become a rookie all over again, and that to me was one of my most favourite parts of the journey. ‘Am I going to make it?’ I don’t know, but I’m going to give my best.”

Originally published as ‘People want to push you out the door’: Sally Fitzgibbons not ready to let new generation surfers take over