Between Heats

Gabby is sitting with longtime Glorious contributor, photographer Dominique Powers over an iced chai near Lower Trestles, the world-famous surf break just south of San Clemente, California. At just 24, veteran does seem a little excessive, particularly as the Hawaiian surfer is discussing the slightly surreal business of joining the Tour as a rookie in 2022 and now finding herself among the best surfers in the world.

“I was like, ‘I do not belong here.’ I’m going in the line-up and trying to get waves with people I’ve looked up to my whole life. There’s no way this is actually real.” Gabby was named Rookie of the Year in her debut 2022 season and has spent the years since making a fairly convincing case that she belonged there all along. She won her first Championship Tour event at Margaret River in 2024, went back and won it again in 2025 and reached world No.1 during the season. Now she watches the new girls arriving and recognises the feeling immediately. “No one is looking at them thinking, ‘They don’t belong here.’ But when you’re the new girl, that’s how it feels.” She might be five seasons in, but she isn’t entertaining the idea that she has been around for long. “I still have hopefully so much more left of my career. I’m finally feeling solid.”

Gabby’s life now involves travelling from one of the world’s best waves to another, usually with her mum and her filmer. Competition dictates the geography, but there is a lot of life happening around it. A standard day off begins with sleeping in and getting a hot chocolate with friends. There might be a surf, lunch and shopping. Tennis became an obsession at one recent event. Cards and Bananagrams get fiercely competitive. She loves scrapbooking, although carrying the necessary supplies around the world isn’t particularly practical, so she has moved it online to Canva.

And then there are the TikTok dances. Gabby and close friend Carissa Moore, the five-time world champion, can apparently spend several days learning one. “We’re just so silly, and it usually takes us like three days to figure out one, actually nail it. We’ll text each other and be like, ‘Okay, meet at 3 o’clock, TikTok dance practice!’”

More extraordinary still is what happens when they post them. “I swear we could get the best wave of our life and be so proud of it, all of that, and we’ll get a certain amount of comments. A stupid dance, those things go viral! All we have to do is dance, not, you know, face our fears on the waves,” she laughs.

There are, inevitably, things Moore understands that few other friends could. The pair can find themselves drawn against one another in a Championship Tour heat and then carry on exactly where they left off afterwards. “It’s just like going surfing with a friend, really. We’re just like, ‘May the best surfer win.’ We’re not really gonna let a heat make us mad at each other.” They watch each other compete, too. “It’s hard to relate to someone who’s never competed, and she’s been through it all. She knows what to say.”

Moore recently returned to the Championship Tour after taking time away to have her daughter and is once again competing alongside Bryan. Even while she was away, she watched Bryan’s heats and messaged afterwards. “It was, ‘So proud of you,’ either way. ‘You ripped, good job,’ or ‘Don’t even worry about it, the year’s long.’” Gabby now gets to see her friend in a different phase of life too. “It’s cool to see her with her daughter and just in a different stage.”