New Jersey native Dani Burt grew up skateboarding and bodyboarding, but always found a primal need to be in the ocean. Prior to her losing her right leg (above her knee) in a motorcycle accident, however, she had never been surfing. Now Burt, a doctor of physical therapy at Scripps Memorial Hospital, has been named the 2016 WSA US champion in adaptive surfing and looks to secure another title.
\nBetween Nov. 29 and Dec. 3, she will be competing in the Stance Adaptive World Surfing Championship at La Jolla Shores. Presented by Vissla and the City of San Diego, this is the first year that Burt will be able to surf in a women\u2019s-only division. “I was in Hawaii about 10 or 11 years ago for the Duke\u2019s Festival. This was after the accident, after watching a lot of the competitions, I knew I had to get back in the water,” said Burt. “Around this time, however, there weren\u2019t any \u2018surf legs,\u2019 so I had to rig one up and some of my surfer friends took me out.”
\nWhile her background, developed balance and board knowledge helped push her forward, like most starting something from scratch, she had her doubts. It wasn\u2019t until a chance meeting with legendary surfer and shaper Donald Takayama at his Oceanside shop that she dialed it in.
\n“It was truly inspiring, as he is someone who I definitely looked up to,” said Burt. “We were talking at the shop one day, and he was like \u2018here, take a board.\u2019 He was a huge influence on me. For the ISA contest, I have a 9-foot-long Takayama and a 7-foot-10-inch-long pintail mini in my quiver.”
\nPrior to this year\u2019s contest, there weren\u2019t enough women to comprise a women\u2019s “para surfing” (adaptive surfing) division, so Burt competed in the mixed-gender division. Despite being the minority sex in her group, she went on to capture the 2016 title, as well as come in second this year. In 2016, the event featured seven women from five countries across three divisions. The inclusion of a separate women\u2019s division has played a key role in more than doubling women\u2019s participation in this year\u2019s contest.
\n\u00a0“The ISA is proud to be actively promoting and developing women\u2019s surfing around the globe,” said ISA president Fernando Aguerre. “Creating an opportunity for women in the Stance ISA World Adaptive Surfing Championship is just another step in working towards complete gender equality, which is the ultimate goal.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Jersey native Dani Burt grew up skateboarding and bodyboarding, but always found a primal need to be in the ocean. Prior to her losing her right leg (above her knee) in a motorcycle accident, however, she had never been surfing. Now Burt, a doctor of physical therapy at Scripps Memorial Hospital, has been named […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":275644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"ISA?Adaptive Surf Competition in La Jolla adds women\u2019s division","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,12360,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-duplicate","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}