When Honolua Blomfield Wins, She Wins for Hawaii

Hawaiian style queen Honolua Blomfield has won just about every longboarding contest there is to win. But she's far from finished. She took out the International Surfing Association's Longboard World Championships last month in El Salvador in firing surf at El Sunzal, 11 years after she claimed her first title over the junior boys in 2013 in Peru. The Hawaiian team also managed to snag the team gold medal – a result that came down to Honolua needing to win the event to bring it home.

Familiar with the powerful North Shore fare she grew up on riding nine-foot-plus boards out at Haleiwa, Honolua looked comfortable in solid surf all week.

“I love that contest just because you can actually compete with a team, whereas throughout the year no other contest you're allowed to compete with your team and your country or whatever you want to call it,” Honolua says of the ISAs, “I think that’s the most special thing about that contest – having their [Hawaii’s] support and the good vibes.”

“I feel like a lot of the time throughout the year in contests it’s kind of like everyone's on their own, and it was cool to just have more of a support system and everyone working together for a greater goal than yourself,” she says.

In the intervening decade since she won the ISA Juniors in Peru, back in 2013, Honolua has since claimed three WSL Longboard World Titles, winning them across a transition from high performance to traditional judging criteria and proving that her aptitude transcends circumstances. It has, however, been two years since she won her last contest, so defeating a field of 64 surfers from across the globe felt pretty good.

"It was cool to just have more of a support system and everyone working together for a greater goal than yourself.”

“It's a contest that I clearly haven't won in 10 years and it wasn't even in the same division, so to take a win in a new division and something I haven't done yet was really cool,” she says. “I've gotten really lucky in my years of competing and have many accomplishments in a short time but I haven't really won a contest in particular at all in the past two years, so I think it was special for [my family] to see me win and get maybe some confidence back.”

Since she won her third World Title in 2021, the format of the WSL Longboard World Tour changed in 2023 to imitate a version of the CT, with four events over the season – the fourth featuring only the eight highest-ranked surfers and running over a single day in finals format. Honolua won her third World Title with a quarter final finish at the last event of the year in Malibu, so she has mixed feelings about the new format.

“It's like a love-hate thing because I do feel like yeah, I earned my World Title in the quarters, but I get it in a way because it wasn't like the most thrilling World Title that I've gotten, it wasn’t like it all comes down to this moment and I had to win,” says Honolua. “For my other two, basically it came down to the last heat and I think that’s super cool, too. But I think the third World Title kind of proves that I did the work throughout the year as well.”

Someone at the top of their game might feel like they need to prove themselves under this new format, but for Honolua, that type of pressure doesn’t exist. "I don't know if I'd necessarily want to prove myself, I think it's more that I love competing and I am still gonna compete no matter what the structure is because I enjoy it," she says. "“It's the feeling of winning, it just keeps you coming back, the feeling of accomplishing a World Title. Winning a contest is one thing and that's a great feeling too, obviously, but I feel like it's just that on steroids, the feeling of winning the World Title is such a great high."

As the Longboard Tour has been remodeled in recent years, with more events in better waves, there has been a marked lift in the level of performance, particularly in the women’s draw. “Everyone is improving and it’s obviously cool to see,” Honolua says, “you have to work your ass off nowadays to stay at the top and if you're not on your A game or if your boards aren't perfect…everything has to be perfect.” she says.

"Winning a contest is one thing and that's a great feeling too, obviously, but I feel like it's just that on steroids, the feeling of winning the World Title is such a great high."

Honolua wasn’t the only Hawaiian to exercise dominance and bring home an individual gold medal from the ISA’s in El Salvador, with reigning WSL Longboard Champ and veteran Kai Sallas dropping a 9.5 in the final and claiming gold as well. The result meant that for Hawaii to win team gold, Honolua had to win the final and the Japanese surfer had to get third or worse. Honolua describes the moment waiting for the scores to come in: “My team was on the beach with me and then we heard the score and we were just losing it on the beach like ‘we did it’... it was a career highlight moment.”

For Honolua, the win meant something more than just personal glory. “I think it's really cool because we're representing Hawaii and all four of us are native Hawaiian, so it just feels powerful,” says Honolua, about what feels like the title returning to its natural home. “I feel like it was just a different sort of feeling, you feel your ancestors out in the water too, and you’ve got your flag and your people and it was just really cool.”

“It means a lot to me. I really want everyone to know that,” she adds.

The WSL Longboard World Tour will kick off at the end of next month with the first event at Bells Beach. There is still a mysterious unannounced location on the calendar, with finals day taking the longboarders back to El Sunzal, putting Honolua in a pretty good position for a record fourth World Title.