Pure Inspiration: Four-Time Para Surfing Champion Victoria Feige

Pure Inspiration: Four-Time Para Surfing Champion Victoria Feige

“We’re all going to face incredibly difficult situations in life. There is so much we can’t control, but we do get to choose how we respond. I think surfing makes you inherently resilient and adaptable — you’re literally adapting to what’s changing beneath you. There’s also that willingness to take the waves on, get beaten down, and keep pushing for the outside. If you keep going, it’ll show you how strong you are, and you’re eventually gonna make it out the back. And who knows? You might get the ride of your life!”

That’s Victoria Feige, the woman who just won the kneel division at this month’s ISA Para Surfing Games, effectively making her the first female four-time world champion in adaptive surfing history. But even more impressive than her competitive record is the positivity and determination she exhibits every day, despite the many challenges she faces.

“I’m still a boardsports girl,” she says. “I kneeboard now instead of riding waves standing up, and I have to adapt the physics for my body, but the rush is still the same. I know I can head to the beach in my wheelchair, leave it on the sand, catch my waves, pop up to my knees, and get barreled if I’ve got the right section. I love the speed of a steep drop or an open-face carve. I’m free in the water.”

Victoria grew up skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing and skiing. When she was 18, she overshot a snowboard kicker and sustained a traumatic spinal fracture and spinal cord injury, which left her partially paralyzed from the waist down and in a wheelchair. She immediately began looking forward.

“With a traumatic injury, there’s a lot to navigate physically and mentally,” she says. “If you love the ocean, the mountains, or the adrenaline rush, that doesn’t stop after an injury, whether it’s an ACL tear or something major. I feel the most like myself in the mountains and ocean, and I was determined to keep that in my life, but I was scared it wouldn’t feel the same. Luckily, once you get over the re-learning phases, the speed and flow feel the same.”

Victoria knew she could sit-ski but wasn’t sure she would ever surf at a high level again. She was still a strong swimmer, so she figured she would just go straight in the whitewash on a big foamie. But after a lot of training, advice and support from the adaptive surf community, Victoria eventually progressed to duck-diving, catching set waves and doing manoeuvres on a 5’3”.

“The physical part was all about adaption, grit and problem-solving,” she says. “For example, I learned to duck-dive in a pool with my knees instead of my feet. Even in warm water, I have to wear surf leggings and booties for protection from sunburns and reef cuts that I can’t feel. To get over the sand, I use a piggyback, a beach wheelchair, or I straight up crawl like a little ninja into the surf.”

“Once I’m in the water, I’m a strong paddler so I feel equal in the lineup,” she continues. “To be honest, the hardest physical challenge was learning to get into a wet wetsuit with paralysis! It was brutal at first, 30 to 40 minutes of exhaustion. I felt punished for trying, and it actually negatively colored my surf session. So, to all the para surfers out here: get a suit that dries quickly. Or better yet, get two, so you can always get into a dry suit!”

“The mental aspect of the injury was the most difficult thing to deal with,” she says, “and dealing with people’s assumptions about me as a wheelchair user. I didn’t feel different inside, but I looked different and I was treated very differently. I felt like I was a screen onto which people projected whatever they wanted to see — whether that was a tragedy, an inspiration, or a cautionary tale about adventure sports. It’s hard to explain to folks that using a wheelchair, prosthetic, or mobility device is no different than wearing eyeglasses. It’s all just adaptive equipment. It doesn’t change your personality.”

Victoria quickly became a para surfing veteran at the ISA Games, and she maintains the adaptive community in general and those events in particular have given her a new lease on life. And she is excited to spread the word to help other athletes discover this community.

“Competing in the 2016 ISA event changed my life,” she says. “I’d thought of a disabled surfing contest as a feel-good event with low-level skill. As it turns out, I was totally underestimating it, and I got smoked! I finished second to last! [laughs] Watching guys like Mark “Mono” Stewart and Alcino “Pirata” Neto do snaps and get barreled in heats absolutely blew my mind. It was simply great surfing. It changed my perspective about what was possible for adaptive surfing and what was possible for me, post-injury. I wanted to surf like that, and the guys gave me advice, even during competitions. We all want to win, but we help each other, too. And I want to pay that forward to other adaptive athletes.”

“This year was our largest ISA event yet, with 181 para surfers, and I hope our sport keeps growing,” she says. “Para surfing is getting more support from our respective federations, as well. At this year’s contest, for the first time ever, our para Team Canada had pro-level coaching and video analysis from Shannon Brown. Working with him has been amazing and his coaching changed the event for me. But the vibe at our contests is all about camaraderie. Having a disability can be isolating, but these people are on my wavelength.”

“One time at the U.S. Open, 15 adaptive surfers and I crashed on the floor of a para surfer friend’s house to keep costs down,” she says. “There were eight different countries represented around the dinner table, and we all had the same thirst for adventure. Para surfers often have these wild stories about catastrophic life events — shark attacks, car crashes, spinal fractures, limb loss, vision loss, paralysis — but everyone is still surfing, comparing boards, cracking jokes, planning trips and living life to the fullest!”

There has been a big push the past couple years to get surfing included in the Paralympics, and that’s become a major goal for Victoria and her fellow competitors.

“We have a good chance for LA 2028,” says Victoria. “Thanks to Dr. Mo Johnson, we have a reliable classification system in which athletes with similar levels of function are surfing against each other in their divisions. For the most recent ISA, the divisions were stand, kneel, prone, prone assist, wave-ski, and visually impaired. Para surfing is a compelling sport, and Paralympic inclusion would be spectacular for surfers, as well as for the Summer Games. I hope we keep growing our sport and inspiring new para surfers.”

“It’s been a dream come true to return to surfing after my injury,” she adds, “and to become part of the adaptive surf community and progress to better turns and tubes and find success in competition, it feels like I’m still discovering what I can do and it’s just the beginning. I hope my story encourages other people with injuries to adapt the physics and keep surfing, whether it’s prone, kneeling, standing, wave-ski or visually impaired. Surfing is for everybody!”