Surfing has become more progressive in recent years – the World Surf League introduced equal prize money in 2018 – but Crane insists deep-seated sexism remains. “It’s definitely still an issue, but girls are getting contracts now purely for their sporting ability and that really wasn’t the case 15 years ago.”
The pressure to look good in front of the lens was the trigger for Crane’s troubled relationship with food in her adolescence. She distinctly recalls one well-known sponsor publicly labelling her “fat” and cites the toxic nature of the surfing industry as the reason for developing bulimia aged 17. The condition accelerated her retirement just four years later.
She was still in the clutches of the eating disorder when she applied to be a contestant on the reality TV series Love Island in 2018, determined to promote a more athletic and muscular physique on the show.
“I went into Love Island wanting to represent the strong girl and just be a different body type, but it was really tough in there for me. I was still bulimic when I was in the house. The thing about bulimia is, when you’re really living a transient life and there’s lots of things that are out of control, it’s this thing that breeds control.”
Crane, who also endured a near-fatal experience with sepsis after going on the show, would not overcome her eating disorder until the pandemic, when she pressed the reset button. After extensive therapy, she returned to her haven – the ocean – to pursue big-wave surfing, a discipline in which adrenalin-junkie surfers are towed by a jet ski into waves that can exceed the size of three-storey buildings, and it is a sport in which Crane has excelled.
In April this year, she became the first British woman to surf a 60ft wave in Nazare, Portugal, the surfing spot which is home to some of the world’s most treacherous surfing environments.
