Molly Picklum

Young NSW surfer Molly Picklum had jaws dropping on the sand at Sunset Beach in Hawaii in February 2024 – not because she won the competition (although she did) but because of the move that sealed the victory.

Molly recorded a 9.67 wave on her way to a final against rising local star Bettylou Sakura Johnson, with a manoeuvre rarely attempted – let alone successfully executed – in world surfing.

The move saw Molly’s board leave the water, allowing her to freefall from the top of the wave with an avalanche of white water behind her. Surfer Magazine described it as “the turn of the event ... maybe even the decade."

With the win, Molly defended the Sunset title she won the year prior and reclaimed the world No.1 ranking.

“I threw everything at it and I kind of fell out of the sky and I was either dead or in the final,” she said of the move. “That’s Sunset, you’ve gotta commit. Lucky I made it.”

Just two weeks before, Molly had ridden a perfect 10 at the Pipe Pro at Oahu in Hawaii, on her way to the final.

These are the sort of performances that have led to Molly being described as the future of world surfing. But despite her meteoric rise to the top, Molly has also known desperate lows in her short career.

For Molly to compete in surfing in the Paris 2024 Olympics, it was held 16,000km away from the city of Paris in the French territory of Tahiti.

Home to the world renowned Teahupoʻo reef, for its big and powerful breaking waves, Molly had to content with the reef, the world number one Caitlin Simmers (USA), Tatiana Weston-Webb (BRA) and France's top hope in the event Johanne Defay.

In the first knockout heat Molly, the then 21-year-old, went down 11.83 - 7.43 to Defay.

Her rookie season in 2022 started like a dream, with two top-five finishes, and ended in the nightmare of being unceremoniously dumped from the Championship Tour thanks to the WSL’s mid-season cut.

Molly was born in Gosford, NSW, and first stood up on a surfboard when she was three, before going on to hone her skills on slabby Central Coast breaks.

“I used to surf before and after school,” she said. “And I was lucky at North Shelly Boardriders that I had a lot of friends doing the same thing, so we’d all ride our bikes to school and race to time it with the bell. We’d see who could get the last waves and then get to school the quickest.”

She won 2020 Australian Surfing Rising Star award and was named Surfing Life magazine’s No.1 junior female due to her consistently impressive results.

Molly won the Australian junior title in 2018 and 2019 and by 2020 she was competing at senior level on the WSL Qualifying Series.

After her rookie season was interrupted by the mid-year cut, Molly came back stronger and was a revelation in only her second year on the tour, earning a host of top-five finishes, including the win at Sunset, second place at Bells Beach, and claiming the world No.1 ranking.