ISABELLA NICHOLS IS POISED, READY TO POUNCE ON
HER ROOKIE YEAR.

 

We’ve got the golden arches to thank for gifting us the surfing talent of WCT rookie Isabella Nichols. Well, that and her father’s cunning tactics. On a camping trip to Double Island Point,      Mr. Nichols pushed an eight-year-old “Bella” into her first wave. Speaking to us today from her home near the Gold Coast border, where she eagerly awaits WSL 2021 Tour commencement updates, Bella vividly recalls the moment of that debut ride. “It was in the flags,” she says. “There must’ve been a thousand people and I’m standing up dodging them while they clap me on.” 

Her doting ocean-loving dad, Ross Nichols, couldn’t have been happier. After all, the journey to get to this point had been a long one. As a young Aussie surf adventurer, Ross fell in love with Lisbeth—a Danish woman who convinced him to relocate to her homeland of Denmark. There they brought twin sisters into the world—Isabella and Helena. When the girls turned three, Ross’s ocean obsession lured the family back to Australia and they settled in Coolum on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, a world away from the short, dark days of Denmark. Five years later, here was his little Bella riding a wave all the way to the shore. He was living every surf dad’s dream; this would be the start of his daughter’s froth. Only, it wasn’t. 

“While Bella had started to surf a little more, she was far from hooked”

Come age 12, while Bella had started to surf a little more, she was far from hooked. So Mr. Nichols had to think smart. It was time to up the stakes. “My dad had to bribe me with a bacon and egg McMuffin in the mornings before school,” Bella says, noting the salty, gooey goodness was definitely worth getting wet for. “I did a few primary school contests and the only reason I liked doing them was because I was hanging out with my mates,” she says. But then, something clicked. Ross could finally ditch the drive-through and the McBribery. “I was about 15 and was like, ‘Dad, you don’t need to buy me these anymore because I’m actually loving [surfing] now’,” she says. 

 

LET’S DO THIS

 

Compared to her competitors, Bella was a late bloomer to the sport. But while her rise to the surfing spotlight was rapid, it wasn’t seamless. In her first contest, a primary school event, Bella made it all the way to the final. This was it, her moment to shine and surely the catalyst to her competitive career. Except for one minor hitch—a complete disregard for the rules. “I literally dropped in on every single person on every single wave. I got dead last,” she laughs. “I was like, ‘I don’t understand what happened!’ Everyone was shaking their head at me.” 

It wasn’t until Bella set her mind to surfing as being her “thing” that success soon followed. “I had to choose between soccer and boardriders and surfing contests,” she says, and confesses      she’s the “clumsiest person in the world”—a possible hindrance for ball skills, which ultimately made for an easy decision. 

“That was the moment I started to take things seriously”

So surfing it was. The Nichols’ packed the car and turned Bella’s grom comp campaign into family vacations. Bella wasn’t only returning with beautiful memories, but with first-place results—the 2012 Skullcandy OZ while running amok at Ballina’s Big4, and the 2013 Occy Grom while in kid-heaven at the Kirra caravan park. It was around this time, at the age of 16, that Bella’s surfing flipped from being fun to being a serious stab at turning pro, and she remembers the pivotal moment that happened. “I was lying in bed and Dad came in. We were having a good ol’ chat and he said, ‘So do you wanna do this for a living, and put in a lot of effort?’ and I said, ‘yeah’. That was the moment I started to take things seriously; now I’ve gotta train, look at boards, try and find a sponsor who can help me …” 

 

LIFE AS A TWIN

For many young athletes, they’re already on a professional path before hitting the coming-of-age phase, so are braced that their teen years might look a little differently and more disciplined to their school peers. But for Bella, arriving at that point at 16 could’ve swung either way. Friends were getting their driver’s licence, which often means more freedom and a desire to let loose. “At 15, my twin sister was partying like a wild woman,” Bella laughs. “I looked at it and thought, I’m actually not into all that kind of stuff. While I’ll hang out with mates and have a drink, I’ve never really been into partying, I’ll never go out and get blind. So that probably influenced my decision too.”

Before we launch into the next stage of Bella’s story, a succession of big highs and career-crushing lows, there’s one thing we’d first love to know: any trippy twin tales? Bella generously opens up about the moment in Grade 1 that her and Helena fell sick on the same day with the same condition. “We ended up in hospital, diagnosed with a hereditary blood disorder called spherocytosis—where our blood cells are a spherical shape instead of a normal concave disc shape. My spleen completely shut down because it had to work overtime to filter the red blood cells, and my sister’s was badly damaged. I got mine removed and she still has hers,” Bella says. “This means, if I get sick I can get a little sicker than a fully healthy person. Not easier to get sick, but just more severe once I get something. I have to be super careful with bacterial infections, cuts etc., those are the ones that can really make me ill.” This certainly makes for an extra level of caution for a professional surfer travelling to remote locations, and now being in the middle of a global pandemic. But that’s not her only challenge. “I can get tired a lot quicker so recovery for me is crucial, and looking after the body. I’ve also had my gallbladder removed as a result of the blood disorder. I was in and out of hospital quite regularly as a kid.”

“We ended up in hospital, diagnosed with a hereditary blood disorder”

Anyone swiping through Bella’s Instagram will be witness to her dedication to training and taking ultimate care of her body. Which, unsurprisingly, women’s mainstream media took a particular interest in when Isabella was cast as Blake Lively’s stunt surfer in the 2016 shark-fearing flick, The Shallows. Bella describes that filming experience as “the time of her life”, and would definitely be up for it again. But first, she had even bigger fish to fry. 

RISE & FALL

In Portugal January 2016, Bella was crowned the WSL World Junior Champion. This result was reassurance that she had what it took to qualify for the WCT, so for the remainder of that year Bella blazed with her head down into the WQS. Her results fluctuated between 3rds and 25ths, and her chance of a ’CT start came down to the final event at Cronulla. Entering the water for the semi-final against Silvana Lima, Bella needed to win the heat to clinch the qualification. But despite posting an eight-point ride, the highest score of the heat, Bella was defeated by the Brazilian. 

In 2017, Bella was frothing for her second shot. Her metaphorical Sharpie was poised ready to make her mark on the WQS. But she exited the year with barely a scribble, let alone a qualification. Throughout the 2018 season, the same thing happened. So where did things go wrong? “I wasn’t consistent,” Bella expresses. “On the ’QS, consistency is key. People found my weaknesses and took advantage of them. If someone put a score on the board in the first five minutes, I’d crumble. If I wasn’t dominating the whole heat, I would crumble.” Her crumbly shortfalls may not be obvious to onlookers, so Bella explains, “My emotions would get overwhelmed. I’d make silly decisions—wouldn’t surf as well. I had a lot of interferences, too.”

“Even the best surfer can crumble if you put the right amount of pressure on them”

A shift came in 2019. It had nothing to do with Bella’s surfing ability—that’s often compared to an ultimate combination of Stephanie Gilmore and Carissa Moore—it was all in her head. She began training with Mark Richardson and with that came a merging of the analytical minds. “I reckon [surfing] is 40% ability and 60% mental,” Bella says. “Even the best surfer can crumble if you put the right amount of pressure on them.” Mark introduced strategy into Bella’s game plan and encouraged her to liken a heat to the tactics of chess. “Instead of going into [a contest] like ‘I need to win’, it was like, ‘oh, let’s have some fun. If they do this, then I can do this’. Try to do counter moves that fit the different parts of the heat,” she says. When asked how she thinks she’s perceived as a competitor, she laughs. “When we were doing a mock heat, someone said to me that I’m known for my ‘cat and mouse’, which I didn’t know. At the start of a heat I love to jostle for the inside no matter what. I’ll paddle you 100 metres down the beach, I don’t care,” Bella says, then confesses she’ll sacrifice 20 minutes to only surf a five minute heat if it means she’ll nab the inside. 

But having a coach she could connect with wasn’t the only contributing factor for Bella’s most successful year in surfing. There was another force at play that was a step aside from the usual suspects of hardware, fitness, and money. It was learning. Bella enrolled to study a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering at Deakin University and found that while it was definitely challenging time-wise, it sharpened her mind. “I was so stale, my attention span was super small,” Bella says, acknowledging that this feeling left her out of sorts both on land and in the ocean. “When I started studying it was like pouring oil into a rusted metal part and the cogs started turning.” By the end of 2019, Bella had not only found comfort in knowing she has a Plan B career path, but she qualified for the 2020 WCT. Except, then came COVID-19. 

 

ROOKIE AT THE READY

When we speak, Bella is waiting patiently for an announcement on the next season’s tour and when she can begin her rookie campaign. Has she been taking advantage of time off and surfing her brains out? Not really. “I’ve kinda been avoiding the ocean here at the moment. We’ve had heaps of shark encounters, there’s at least one or two sightings a day,” Bella says, understandably spooked after the fatal attack at Greenmount, and the horrifying one at Cabarita, both in the same month as our interview. Bella’s fascination with wave pool technology, something she hopes to use her mechanical engineering degree to be involved with, is looking like an attractive predator-free option right now.

Being a first-time ’CT surfer with no preconceived expectations about the way things were, you could argue that Bella has an advantage over other competitors who’re confronted by change. With the recent disruption to the World Champion-crowing framework, what would Bella propose if she were in a position to shake up the WSL format? She takes a moment to consider, and then jumps in excitedly. “You know how they have a two-week waiting period and sometimes it’s not always in the best season, because it’s better for the viewers? I reckon having a full open year, and then give you two week’s notice,” Bella says. “No set destination. Like, we’re going to have the Europe leg open to have it anywhere there in a two month period …” she says, trailing away to then rattle off a bunch of pros and cons for this format. Conversation pivots to the other point of discussion regarding the 2021 Tour, and something that’s been occupying Bella’s mind: Teahupo’o. It’s the first time since 2006 that the wave makes a comeback to the Women’s WCT and the world can’t wait to see this era of female surfers take it on. “I’m pumped [but] I’m definitely nervous about it. I’ve surfed it once before when I was 15,” Bella says, explaining she was in Tahiti for an event held at a nearby beach break. “We did a day trip to Teahupo’o; it was only about three foot, and I was sitting on the shoulder thinking, ‘This is the scariest place in the whole world!’” So how do you prepare for such a challenge when you can’t even leave the country to practise? “I’ll have a TV on with Go-Pro footage of ‘Chopes’ just to get comfortable,” Bella says, noting it’s difficult to find left-handers on the Gold Coast to hone her skills, so visualisation is the next best thing. “I’ve also been going to Straddie heaps and working on my backhand barrel riding,” Bella says, which paid off in more ways than one when Bella recently won the Boost Mobile Gold Coast Pro specialty event in a chunky South Straddie swell.

“We’ve had heaps of shark encounters”

The privilege of qualifying for the WCT extends far beyond an impressive LinkedIn profile entry. So, as well as being one of the world’s best surfers, what legacy does Bella hope to leave? “I don’t want to be safe. I want to perform out of my skin, consistently, instead of letting my nerves take over,” she says. “And, I really believe in being a good person and giving everyone time, and helping the next generation.” Bella voices extreme gratitude for the women who did it tough to get the tour to where it is today including, most recently, Stephanie, Sally, Tyler and Carissa. Bella is blown away. These are the women she would hunt autographs from as a grom. Dressed in oversized boardies and a little fedora, she’d hold her pen and poster in the air. Now she has an opportunity to surf against them. So, what nugget of wisdom will Bella be taking along on her debut ride? She smiles towards the laptop camera. “My favourite saying of all—that’s so relevant to how I progressed in surfing—is: life’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.”

Words by Kate McMahon // Image by @andrewshield & Surfing Life magazine

This article was published in Australia’s Surfing Life magazine. For more stoke, be sure to subscribe to the mag.

Tags: Isabella Nichols, professional surfer, rookie, surfer girl, surfing, WSL