Romain Knows

Name: Romain Laulhé

Age: 21

From: Anglet, France

It’s as Romain makes his way from a contest in South Africa to another in Portugal that he finally finds a few minutes to answer our questions. This young entrepreneur, as he likes to call himself, turned pro a few years ago and already has a pretty hectic timetable for someone his age.

At 21, the workload has been piling up on this budding waterman’s desk, mainly in the form of WQS competitions and freesurf trips. He also knows it’s important to develop and promote his own image, as well as his main sponsor, Rip Curl’s. However, taking his surfing to the next level is still of course his number one priority for Romain. “Every day I try to improve my surfing in some way. It still lacks power and size. I know I need to charge harder and lose a few bad habits in some of my manoeuvres. There’s still a lot of work to be done.”

Romain grew up just north of the River Adour in Tarnos before moving down the road to Anglet where he joined the Anglet Surf Club and made his debut in contest surfing. Since then he’s achieved some impressive results, including 4th place at the Junior World Championships in Australia, making the final with Ben Dunn, Ricky Basnet and Bobby Hansen. Despite spending a lot of time doing contests, there are few things Romain enjoys more than going on freesurf trips to discover new spots with his mates, away from the pressure of heats and the race for WQS points. With an already very stamp-filled passport, Tahiti is next up.

Romain rides for: Rip Curl, Sammy, FCS, Gorilla Grip.

Words by Archi