Professional surfer Keala Kennelly was sipping her morning cappuccino at home in Hawaii on October 13 when she received a text from a friend. The message said that the World Surf League, organizer of competitive surfing’s Championship Tour, was planning to hold a 2025 competition in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
Kennelly, who came out as gay two decades ago, was outraged. UAE laws .
“I felt sick to my stomach,” Kennelly told ϳԹ. “How can WSL expect an LGBTQ+ athlete to travel and compete in a country where their very existence is illegal?”
Kennelly, one of the most decorated women’s surfers ever, wrote a scathing note about the WSL’s decision and . She wrote that hosting events in countries that have documented human rights violations should be unacceptable. She expressed concern for Australian surfer , a two-time world champion, who is openly gay and is slated to compete in the WSL 2025 Championship Tour.
“I decided to make the post to raise awareness, hoping that using my social media platform would outrage people like hearing the news outraged me,” Kennelly said. “I also wanted to show support for Tyler so she knows she is not alone and that she has people backing her.”
Kennelly wasn’t the only person from the surfing community to comment on the decision. While Wright did not comment, her wife, Lilli Wright, . “Tyler has competed on this tour for over 14 years and has had the pride flag on her jersey since 2020,” Lilli wrote. “Even after winning 2 world titles she is still not valued enough by the WSL to be considered when they sold this event.”
Lilli penned her note under a photo of Tyler jogging down the beach with a surfboard underarm, next to a pinned post of the couple’s striking wedding portraits from 2022. “WSL have the duty of care to their athletes to not put them in potentially life threatening circumstances like this,” she added.
ϳԹ reached out to the WSL for comment, but we did not receive a response.
The Abu Dhabi leg of the Championship Tour will take place February 14-16, 2025 at the Surf Abu Dhabi artificial wave pool on Al Hudayriat Island, a stretch of sand just south of the city where officials have constructed a BMX park, road cycling track, and water park, among other attractions. According to the WSL’s press release, the surfing venue features groundbreaking wave-making technology from the Kelly Slater Wave Company and is home to the world’s largest and longest human-made wave.
The WSL is not alone in staging events in the UAE—nor is it the only league to receive criticism for doing so. Every February, the world’s best cyclists line up for the UAE Tour, the opening event of the sport’s UCI WorldTour, the highest category of competition. Since 2009, auto racing league Formula One has staged the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at a state-of-the-art auto track. Abu Dhabi hosts some of the best tennis players of the year in an event called World League, and even the National Basketball Association stages an exhibition event in the UAE, called the Emirates NBA Cup. The UAE hosts other major international events for beach volleyball, soccer, and sailing.
Critics have called this practice “sportswashing”—when repressive countries attract international sports to seem more in line with Western ideals. The New York Times of holding sporting events like NBA preseason games in Abu Dhabi, citing Ben Freeman of the Quincy Institute: “When you think of the U.A.E., they want you thinking about tennis. They would love for you to think about the N.B.A. [. . .] much rather have you thinking about that than all the bad things that are also part of their reputation.”
In her Instagram post, Kennelly specifically called out the UAE’s track record on human rights, specifically for LGBTQ+ people and women. “Emirati women live under male guardianship,” she wrote. “Honor Killings can go unpunished, as the victim’s family can pardon the murderer.”
According to , an advocacy and research group based in New York City, authorities in the UAE can also arrest people for a variety of vaguely defined “flagrant indecent acts” including “public displays of affection, gender nonconforming expressions, and campaigns promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.”
On October 16, the Queer Surf Club, an international organization that coordinates meet-ups for like-minded surfers, to urge the WSL to remove Abu Dhabi from its World Championship tour calendar.
“The WSL have chosen to support a government that criminalizes LGBTQIA+ people and discriminates against women, and in doing so are choosing to place their athletes, support teams, and spectators at risk,” reads the opening paragraph to the petition.
More than two-dozen organizations, ranging from London Surf Film Fest to Surf Queer Mexico to Trans Cyclist Collective, have taken up the cause, promoting it on their own social networks.
Kennelly told ϳԹ that she would “Absolutely not” travel to Abu Dhabi. “Some of the comments on my post said things like “get over it, just don’t do gay things while you are there,’ she said. “But even if I traveled there without my wife, I look like a lesbian. I have short hair, I don’t dress in feminine clothes. Even if I wasn’t physically harmed I can’t imagine how badly I would be treated in a place like that.”
Kennelly retired from WSL competition in 2007, and she’s doubtful that Wright or other current competitors will speak up against the UAE event. Article 14.04 of the specifically prohibits athletes from making comments that cast the league, WSL management, judges, or its sponsors in a negative light. This rule extends to a surfer’s social media.
Lilli Wright declined to comment to ϳԹ when contacted. “I definitely think it is a very important discussion to be had,” she wrote in response to a request for an interview. “But at this stage I’m not comfortable saying anything further.”
But she also wrote candidly about how uncomfortable she feels at the thought of Tyler competing in a place like Abu Dhabi, while at the same time recognizing how disadvantageous, career-wise, it would be for her to skip the event. “I see how hard my wife works every day on her career and it’s unreasonable to expect her to just not go,” she wrote. “Her life is worth more than one event, but I can’t not acknowledge that missing this event would put her career at a huge disadvantage.”
Lilli ended her post by circling back to her frustration with the WSL: “At the end of the day, WSL had absolutely no business selling this event to this location expecting their only openly queer athlete to go along quietly.”