At 39, Swedish entrepreneur Maria Allebring sold her business, booked a one-way ticket to Brazil and learnt to surf from scratch. Five years later, she’s competing for the chance to represent Sweden on the world stage. FOLIO discovers how a long-held dream became an unexpected second career.
For too many of us, life gets in the way of pursuing our dreams. But not so for Swedish entrepreneur Maria Allebring who, at the age of 39, decided to become a professional surfer. Until then, she had only been on a board a couple of times as a teenager while visiting her cousin from Hawaii, but it was enough to plant the seed. “I went to see him in LA when I was 17 and I remember thinking, one day I’m going to go somewhere where there are good waves and learn to surf…. it only took another 20-odd-years until I actually did something about it,” she says, laughing.
Before finding her way back to the ocean, Maria spent her youth competing as a horse rider – a sport she started at the age of three. After 12 years in the saddle, she decided to explore new horizons. She went on to study business, worked in marketing and project management, then eventually fell into hospitality – first opening a coffee shop in her hometown of Grebbestad, then a poke bowl chain of restaurants in Stockholm called Orange County Foods. “At the time, no-one else was doing poke bowls. It was surf inspired: the most popular dish was called Surf’s Up, and on the wall, there was a surfboard and a huge photo of a surfer girl. Customers would ask if it was me. I was kind of living my dream of surfing through the restaurant,” she says. By the time the pandemic hit in 2020, she had owned the restaurants for five years and was “starting to get an itch that I wanted to do something more. If you have a business that’s working well it’s easy just to stick with it, even if you’re not that inspired. Covid gave me the kick I needed to make a positive change.”
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She sold up, decided to take a year off and booked a one-way ticket to Brazil to learn to surf. Even then though, it was never meant to be a career. “Being a professional surfer wasn’t on my radar but when I arrived in Itacaré I got myself a coach, surfed every day for three months and fell in love with it,” she continues. Almost immediately, she began researching on the internet for tips on how to get better faster.
In many ways being an athlete is very similar to being an entrepreneur. When you’re running a business, you have to be very disciplined and driven; I brought that drive with me into surfing.
Maria began chasing the waves – in Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador – before a message from a stranger on Instagram led her to take this newfound love of the sport to the next level. “Someone asked if I would be interested in participating in the Swedish Surfing Championships,” she says. “I thought it was hilarious because I’d been surfing for less than a year at that point but it made me curious. I started looking at female surfer profiles online to see how good they were and thought, maybe I could compete one day.” Fast forward to 2022 and, after an intense programme with a coach from El Salvador, not only did she compete in the championships, she also made it to the final.
“That year the championships were held in a wave pool in Texas. I only had one competition under my belt so it was very nerve-wracking but fun. In a wave pool, you don’t have the luck of the ocean. Everyone is surfing exactly the same waves: two on the left and two on the right,” she recalls. “It’s very easy to see who is the better surfer, plus the crowd is very close to the athletes so it brings a lot of pressure.”
Now she’s well-versed in competitions, racking up 12 last year, and currently focusing on training for the chance to represent Sweden at November’s ISA World Games, which will be held in Peru (four female surfers are vying for three places). “I’m in Peru preparing so that if I get a spot, I know I’ve done everything possible to be able to perform my best. I can only work on what I can control and the rest is up to them,” she says, rationally. “It’s a pretty heavy wave, with a lot of power, a lot of different tempos. It’s very different from what I’m used to.”
For the last few years, she has been living in an apartment complex an hour’s drive from Sao Paulo with its own wave pool, where she practises for around three hours a day, six days a week (plus multiple gym and cardio sessions). “Three hours is a lot in a pool because you get so many waves that it’s quite hard on the body.” She believes that in many ways being an older athlete is an advantage. “I know myself pretty well. I know if I train with a coach and it’s not a good fit for me or doesn’t feel fun, I’m not going to get the most out of it.”
At the beginning my progress was so quick, people were very encouraging and I got energy from that
Her life experience, she says, also helps her handle when things aren’t going to plan. “At the beginning my progress was so quick, people were very encouraging and I got energy from that. Then it gets to the stage where the things you have to change are smaller and it’s more difficult. It’s easy to get frustrated, then doubt creeps in, but I know it’s about hard work and believing I can do it. It’s lot in the mind: if you think you can, you can.”
The main downside is that, of course, her body doesn’t recover as quickly as someone younger. “I have to be more mindful about where I’m putting my energy, not overtrain and do recovery and stretching, sleep well and eat well,” she says. And, while Maria knows she won’t always have the desire or be able to compete forever (she already has an idea for a health and longevity-related business), for now, she is simply enjoying the ride.
“I get to live my dream life, to be an athlete and do what I love every day. I’m a very competitive person so I definitely want to achieve my goals but at the same time, the journey is the most important thing,” she concludes. “When I look back, it’s not going to be one competition that I remember: it’s going to be the people I’ve met, the places I’ve been. This summer I competed in France and I was there with my family. Just to have them at the beach rooting for me and my niece, who stood up on a surfboard for the first time when she didn’t think she was able to – those are the real wins.”
To learn more about Maria - visit her website here or follow her journey on Instagram here.
Maria Allebring