THE REALITY OF A FEMALE WAKEBOARDER

IMG_5804When I was fourteen years old my dad bought me my first Wakeboarding Magazine. I had just started wakeboarding and I read that thing cover to cover, completely amazed by the crisp photographs of these athletes going bigger than I though was possible. Those athletes quickly became my heroes and I could not wait to grow up and be just like them. After waiting carefully each month by the one shop in Sweden that sold international magazines and paid the $10 for each new copy of Wakeboarding Mag the first thing I would do was to flip through the pages, searching for the female riders. And there they were! Leslie Kent, Cathy Williams, Will Christien, Amber Wing and my biggest shero, Dallas Friday. My heart would fill up with pride that those girls were out there and in my eyes, their pictures were even better than the guys!

I would rip out my favorite pictures and post them on my wall. Every day I would watch my shero’s and female role models and I promised myself that one day, this is where I was going to be: determined, brave, hard working and respected. Just like those women on my wall.

Now, 10 years later, I know what it is like to be amongst the top Women in wakeboarding. I compete against my sheroes and I’ve worked with several of the photographers taking those beautiful and crips photos. I work with some of the biggest brands in the industry and I compete in world events. Unfortunately the life of a professional female wakeboarder isn’t at all what I imagined it would be.

In my career I’ve been faced with events I was not ready to face. I was so excited to be doing what I love and so sure that if I just changed one way or the other, I would get all the sparkly promises I had dreamt of as a kid. If I could just get a little bit better the magazines would start publishing my photos, the sponsors would sign me with good contracts and the media would start covering my achievements. Any day now! But no, my reality did not turn out that way.

Luckily for me, social media exploded right before my wakeboarding career started and me and my friends could create our own stories. Facebook, youtube and instagram made it possible for us to promote our own personal brands as the magazines would not do it for us. The amount of women getting published kept on dropping and contests like ”Miss Wakeboarding” where girls were portrayed in their bikini’s and voted on by their looks kept claiming the attention of my beloved industry. That is until Wakeboarding Magazine took responsibility and last year decided to make a change! Besides killing their ”Miss wakeboarding” competition they dedicated a WHOLE ISSUE to the women in wake!! The 14 year old me would’ve been dancing down the street!! Finally the largest magazine in Wakeboarding decided to support the female athletes for real and for that, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you Wakeboarding Magazine.

It’s not only the media where female wakeboarders get neglected. I have so many stories that I don’t know where to start. From the time a judge in a world event slapped my butt not only on one but on two occasions while I was nervously standing on the starting dock to the time a company told me ”But Carro, you are already getting paid a lot for a female athlete, why would you think your salary deserves to be equal to the mens?”. But my point isn’t just about smack-talk, it is much more important than that.

Women in sports are raised to tolerate being treated differently than their male colleagues. And we happily accept it because that is all that we know. Here is my message to you: It does NOT have to be this way. The thing is WE have to be the change. We have to create the events, we have to write the stories, we have to take the photos and we have to stand up for ourselves. In these digital days we all have the power to make our voices heard and it is now more important than ever for companies to keep their following happy. Words like ”prosumers” are being frequently used in marketing and shows us just how much power consumers really have.

The change is just within our reach and with the help of good people in companies working for fair sponsor deals and equal media coverage we will get there! And the good people are out there, we just need to help them to CHANGE THE CONVERSATION.

My hopes and dreams are that my niece will get to grow up in a world filled with Sheroes on her wall. Sheroes that do sports, politics, business and science and not only get judged by their looks.
(All rights reserved carro@wakecarro.com)

KNEE BRACE OR NOT?

image001So I’ve been getting some questions about why I’m not wearing a knee brace after my ACL reconstruction. This is because, together with my PT and my surgeon, I’ve decided to try and get back on the board without needing one. This means my recovery time will be slightly longer than but in the end I want to be trusting my body 110% before getting back into competing and to me a knee brace is a giant “this is not strong” sign. (Of course this might not be the case for other people, I’m simply talking about me and my own body here). My PT supports my decision and when I asked my doctor I got the reply “a knee brace? What? You don’t need a knee brace, I’ve fixed your knee! It’s stronger than your other one!”. 😂 So now it’s time to spend a few more weeks in the gym in Sweden and finish up with my rehab as well as my university studies. So happy to prepare for the 2017 season!
What did your doctor/PT tell you about knee-braces? How come they are so common in Wakeboarding but not in other extreme sports, like skiing for example?

THAILAND

DCIM101GOPROG0211891.JPG

DCIM101GOPROG0211871.JPG

IMG_6126

DCIM101GOPROG0201811.JPG

IMG_6118 IMG_6114 IMG_6112

DCIM101GOPROG0181751.JPG

DCIM102GOPROG0332438.JPG

This life is where I’m the happiest! I feel like I’ve been in a dream for the past 7 months with my university life and being back in Stockholm full time. Now being back in the “Wakeboarding World” I think I’m seeing it with a whole new perspective. I am so grateful to be back doing what I love, even though I am nowhere near the level I’d like to be yet. Seeing all the friends I haven’t been around for a whole year again and feeling like no time at all has passed is both amazing and a bit surreal and meeting new traveling souls, with such similar values to myself, make me feel like home. I still have a few more weeks of rehab and university before I will be back in the Pro Wakeboarder life but  by getting this little taste of it again, I am more hungry for it than ever!

 

THAILAND – BACK WAKEBOARDING!

DCIM101GOPROG0431005.JPG

IMG_5768

DCIM101GOPROG0441032.JPG

DCIM101GOPROG0031182.JPG

DCIM101GOPROG0451068.JPG

DCIM100GOPROG0150229.JPG

After A LONG rehab period I am now finally back wakeboarding again! In the end of January I left Stockholm on a plane straight to Thailand and now after being here for a little over a week I never want to leave! Taking off the dock that first time in about 7 months was like drinking that first sip of water after being on a hot thai bus with no AC for 3 hours. I don’t think I even fully understood how much I’ve missed it and even though I have a few more weeks of rehab left until I will be fully ready to charge again, just being back with that neoprene smell and the feel of warm glassy water under my board brought back so many great feelings. I am also thrilled to be seeing JB again and being back in my daily work uniforms (bikinis). It’s so familiar that it feels like I never left this part of my life. My knee feels better than ever being back in warm weather and I have to pace myself to obey my PT’s orders of “taking it easy”. My knee feels ready for kickers and getting back into contest mode but I am going to play it smart and listen to my Physio, and sipping on coconuts on the beach isn’t too bad that either 😉